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ducktoo · 9 months ago

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Syncing Dream [Aespa x M!Reader]

15. Maknae Down

Note: the anon person who requested this scene, show urself cuz this is for u👍

Masterlist here

(Damn she is ded)

It started with a loud, echoing sneeze—a sharp, drawn-out sound that filled the entire dorm and was immediately followed by a groan of frustration. Y/n looked up from his spot on the couch, where he had been lazily scrolling through his phone, and saw Ningning curled up under a massive blanket on the other side of the room. Her hair was messy, and her eyes were red from what he could only assume was a cold.

Guess the cold decided to transfer from Y/n to Ningning today.

“Ning,” he called out, watching as she struggled to get comfortable in her blanket cocoon. “You good?”

“No,” she sniffled dramatically. “I think I’m dying.”

He raised an eyebrow, getting up to walk over to her. “Dying? Really? From a cold?”

Ningning glared up at him, her face flushed from fever, her nose runny, and tissues piled up next to her. “Yes, really! You wouldn’t understand. It feels like my entire body is shutting down.”

Y/n rolled his eyes, half-amused as he pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “Let me guess—you left the window open last night?”

Ningning’s eyes widened in surprise. “How’d you know?”

“Girl, you always do that when it’s too hot,” Y/n sighed. “But Ning, it’s winter. Having the window open while the fan’s on full blast? Genius.”

Ningning groaned, burying her face in the blanket. “It was fine until I fell asleep, and then when I woke up… well, I felt like this. I swear the weather’s out to get me.”

“Well, congratulations,” Y/n chuckled, mocking her with a single clap. “You’ve officially caught a cold.”

“Wow, thank you, Jung Y/n-psssssss” Ningning blew her nose.

“I know you love me too much, tryna copy me when I was sick last time”

Before Ningning could retort, Karina, Winter, and Giselle entered the living room, dressed and ready for their schedules. Karina took one look at Ningning’s disheveled state and sighed. “You’re staying in today, aren’t you?”

Ningning nodded miserably. “Yeah… you guys go on without me, unnie.”

Giselle, clearly annoyed, huffed, “Great, we’ll be the ones running around while you sit here like a burrito all day.”

“You make that sound like a bad thing,” Ningning shot back, trying to maintain her usual sass, but her voice was too nasally to come off intimidating.

Winter leaned down, placing a hand on Ningning’s forehead. “You do feel warm. Stay put and rest, okay? Don’t make our idiot's life more difficult than it already is.”

Y/n snorted. “Don’t worry, I’ve got this covered. You guys go handle idol life. Minji-noona is downstairs.”

Karina glanced between the two of them, clearly unconvinced. “Alright, but if she gets any worse, call us. And make sure she doesn’t convince you to do anything ridiculous.”

“I make no promises, mom” Y/n joked, giving them a half-hearted salute as they waved goodbye and headed out the door.

Once the apartment was quiet again, Y/n turned to Ningning, who was now staring at the TV screen in front of them. He grabbed the remote and lazily flipped through the channels. “So, what now? Want to binge-watch some K-dramas or something?”

Ningning perked up slightly at the suggestion, her eyes lighting up for the first time since this morning. “Yes! You haven’t watched ‘True Beauty’, right?”

Y/n groaned. “Oh, c’mon. Isn’t that one of those sappy romance dramas? I thought you were more into action stuff.”

Ningning pouted, crossing her arms. “I AM into action stuff, but ‘True Beauty’ is ICONIC, okay? Besides, you need to catch up on your K-drama knowledge, oppa.”

“Can’t we watch something else? Like “Space Sweeper” or something?”

“No!” Ningning shouted, the sickness momentarily left her. “I’m sick today, so I rule!”

With a dramatic sigh, Y/n flipped to the streaming service and put on the first episode. “Fine, but I’m only doing this because you’re sick. You owe me.”

“Deal,” she mumbled, snuggling deeper into the blanket. “But I’m warning you, you’ll get addicted. Don’t say I didn’t tell you.”

As the first episode played, Ningning provided commentary for every dramatic moment. Y/n, despite his earlier protests, found himself getting a little too invested in the story. By the third episode, he was sitting up straight, eyes glued to the screen, reacting alongside Ningning to every twist and turn.

“See? I told you it’s good!” Ningning giggled, nudging him with her elbow. “You’re hooked, aren’t you?”

“Okay, fine,” Y/n admitted, his face scrunched up. “It’s better than I expected. But seriously, how do they make every scene so intense?”

“That’s K-drama magic,” Ningning replied, sniffling again as she wiped her nose. After a beat, her voice softened. “It’s kind of nice… watching these with someone.”

Y/n glanced at her, sensing the sudden shift in her mood. “Yeah, it’s fun. We don’t get much downtime to just hang out like this.”

Ningning hummed in agreement, staring at the screen with a distant look. “I miss it sometimes, you know? Just being at home, watching shows with my mom. I’ve been away for so long… sometimes it hits me harder than I think it will.”

Y/n’s chest tightened at her words. He’d always known that the idols dealt with homesickness, but hearing it so plainly from Ningning made it feel more real. He hesitated for a moment before placing a hand on her head, ruffling her hair gently.

“I get it,” he said quietly. “While I can't say that I'm the same as you, I can say that you got your second family here, right? Your unnie-dul, me… maybe?"

"Of course you are in there!" Ningning groaned, her usual annoyed yet adorable tone began to recover.

"Aight, aight…but we got your back, Ning-ah."

Ningning smiled, her eyes glassy but grateful. “Yeah, you guys make it a lot easier. Especially when you let me make you binge-watch K-dramas.”

“That's Y/n's package for you,” Y/n chuckled, trying to lighten the mood again. “I’m just here for moral support and terrible TV commentary.”

They sat in comfortable silence for a while, the soft glow of the TV flickering across their faces. Eventually, Ningning shifted, resting her head on Y/n’s shoulder.

“You’re not as bad as I thought you’d be,” she murmured sleepily.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Y/n replied with a small grin. "You're more fun to hang out than I thought."

Just as Ningning started to drift off, the front door opened, and the other members trudged back into the dorm, looking tired but relieved to be home. They paused when they saw Ningning and Y/n on the couch, Ningning now fully passed out, her head still resting against his shoulder.

“Looks like the patient’s finally knocked out,” Winter whispered with a smirk.

Y/n gave a thumbs up. “Mission cleared. Though I’m not sure who’s more tired—me or her.”

Karina grinned, walking over and gently draping an extra blanket over Ningning. “Thanks for looking after her. I knew we could count on you.”

“No problem,” Y/n said, feeling the weight of the day finally catch up to him. “Let’s hope she’s better tomorrow.”

As they quietly gathered around, the dorm filled with the familiar warmth of friendship. Even though Ningning had caught a cold, it felt like one of those rare moments where everything was just… okay.

A few days had passed since Ningning's cold turned the dorm into a temporary clinic. She was back to her usual self—energetic, mischievous, and constantly teasing the other members. Y/n was glad to see her better, though he missed the quiet moments they had shared while binge-watching ‘True Beauty’.

It was a Saturday morning when Ningning barged into Y/n's room, her signature grin plastered across her face. She clapped her hands together excitedly, bouncing on her toes. “Y/n-oppa! Get up, get dressed! We’re going out!”

Y/n, still half-asleep and wrapped in his blanket like a burrito, blinked up at her in confusion. “Huh? Where are we going?”

“Just get ready!” she said, pulling the blanket off him with a mischievous tug. “It’s a surprise. You did a lot for me when I was sick, so I’m treating you today!”

Y/n groaned, rubbing his eyes. “Ning, it’s too early for surprises. Can’t we just chill?”

“Nope!” she insisted, practically dragging him out of bed. “You’ll thank me later. Now hurry up or I’ll pick out your outfit for you.”

That was enough to get Y/n moving. The last time Ningning had chosen his clothes, he ended up in a neon green jacket and pants combo that made him look like a human highlighter. He wasn’t going to let that happen again.

“Are you paying for everything?”

“That’s right, I’m your sugar mommy for today, oppa!”

Y/n facepalmed. “Ning, please never repeat that again.”

As they left the dorm, Ningning pulled out her phone and snapped a quick selfie of them both, sending it straight to the group chat.

Ningning:

Taking Y/n out for a day of fun! Wish us luck, ladies 😉.

Within seconds, the responses started flooding in.

Winter:

Oh boy, this ought to be good. Don’t kill him, Ning!

Giselle:

I’m keeping track of this. Take lots of photos.

Karina:

Stay out of trouble, you two.

Ningning giggled, stuffing her phone back into her pocket. “Let the adventure begin!”

A little over an hour later, they were out the door and wandering through one of the city’s many bustling shopping districts. Ningning was in full tour guide mode, pointing out random shops, food stalls, and people as they walked.

“First stop,” she declared with a grin, “the arcade!”

Y/n raised an eyebrow, glancing around at the neon lights and the sound of beeping machines. “You dragged me out of bed for video games?”

“Yup,” Ningning said proudly. “Consider it payback for watching ‘True Beauty’ with me while I was half-dead. Besides, I know you secretly love this stuff.”

She quickly pulled out her phone again, snapping a picture of Y/n standing in front of the arcade and sending it to the group chat.

Ningning:

First stop: arcade. Y/n thinks he’s gonna beat me at these games. He’s so cute when he’s wrong.

Y/n peeked over her shoulder, groaning. “You’re sending updates to the others?”

“Of course!” Ningning laughed. “How else are they going to keep track of your inevitable losses?”

"Oh don't test me, Yizhuo." Y/n rolled up his sleeves.

With those words, the two of them spent hours bouncing from game to game. Ningning was surprisingly skilled at racing games, and Y/n couldn't stop himself from getting competitive during skee-ball.

At one point, Ningning managed to win a stuffed animal from a claw machine, rubbing it in Y/n's face with exaggerated pride.

“Beginner’s luck,” Y/n muttered, trying (and failing) to win his own prize.

“Sure, sure,” Ningning teased, snapping a photo of him concentrating hard on the claw machine. She sent it to the group chat with the caption:

Ningning:

Y/n’s face when he loses... again.

Winter:

LOL, poor idiot. How many tries is that now?

Karina:

He’s got that determined look... Go easy on him, Ning.

After a few more games and much teasing, they decided to take a break at a nearby café inside the arcade. Ningning pulled out her phone once more, sending a final picture of Y/n with a pile of stuffed animals they had won (mostly Ningning’s doing).

Ningning:

Look at our haul! Aren’t we the best team ever?

Winter:

Nice! But you sure it wasn’t all your work, Ning?

Karina:

I see a lot of plushies there. Are you guys going to share?

Y/n shook his head, laughing as he sipped his drink. “You really enjoy teasing me, don’t you?”

Ningning smiled sweetly. “Only because you’re so easy to tease.”

“…all I know is that Jeong will annoy me like you do right now when we get home.”

Ningning grinned slyly. “Oh, speaking of Minjeong-unnie…”

Y/n shot her a wary look. “What about that crybaby?”

“Well,” Ningning said, her voice dripping with mischief, “she’s been acting a bit... different lately, don’t you think?”

Y/n furrowed his brows, trying to play it off casually. “What do you mean by ‘different’?”

Ningning stopped at a snack stall, buying them both some skewered tteokbokki, and turned to Y/n with a teasing grin. “Oh, come on! You know what I’m talking about. Ever since we teased her about setting you up on a date, she’s been a little... defensive.”

Y/n nearly choked on his tteokbokki. “Defensive? No way. She's just—”

Ningning interrupted, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “Face it, Y/n-oppa. She got jealous.”

“Jealous?” Y/n scoffed, though the thought made his stomach flip in a way he wasn’t ready to admit. “That girl is not the jealous type. She’s just... stupid.”

“Sure, sure,” Ningning said, clearly enjoying his reaction. “Keep telling yourself that. But the way she’s been acting lately? I think someone might have a little crush on our dear manager.”

Y/n rolled his eyes, trying to shake off the teasing. “Aish, you’re binging too much K-drama now.”

“Am I though?” Ningning smirked, taking another bite of her snack. “Because if you ask me, she’s got a soft spot for you. You should’ve seen her face the other day when you went to the gym without her.”

Y/n felt a heat rising to his cheeks that had nothing to do with the spicy tteokbokki. “That’s because we’re all friends. We hang out. It’s normal.”

“Mhmm,” Ningning hummed in that infuriatingly knowing way of hers. “Whatever you say. Let's go back and beat you again."

"Tsk. I'll win everything on this second set. Ms. Yizhuo." Y/n flared up.

After the massive win from Ningning, the youngest dragged Y/n to a few more places—a dessert café where they shared a massive bowl of patbingsu, a photo booth where they took ridiculous selfies, and even a random bookstore where Ningning insisted on picking out a K-drama guidebook as a joke.

Y/n had to admit, it was fun. It felt like a proper break from the usual hectic schedules and responsibilities. Although the constant update to their group chat felt like a child updating his mom about his whereabouts.

As the afternoon wore on, they finally made their way to the park, where Ningning collapsed onto a bench, fanning herself dramatically. “I think we’ve officially walked the entire city. How are you not tired?”

Y/n chuckled, leaning back on the bench beside her. “I was tired when you dragged me out of bed this morning. Now I’m just used to it.”

They sat in comfortable silence for a while, watching as the sun dipped lower in the sky. Y/n glanced over at Ningning, who was unusually quiet.

“You okay?” he asked, noticing the thoughtful expression on her face.

Ningning nodded slowly, but her usual brightness had dimmed. “Yeah, just... I guess I’m feeling a little homesick again. It comes and goes, you know?”

Y/n felt a pang of sympathy. He knew how hard it was for the girls (especially Ningning and Giselle) to be away from their families, especially with their demanding schedules. “I get it. It’s tough. But we're here for you.”

Ningning smiled softly, her eyes a little misty. “Yeah, I know. You guys are the best. But sometimes I miss the little things—like my mom’s cooking or just lounging around at home, not having to worry about schedules and performances.”

Y/n nodded. “I think everyone misses home sometimes. It doesn’t go away, but I guess that’s what makes coming back to it even better when you do.”

“…it’s weird that you do make sense from time to time.”

“I am not that big of an idiot.” Y/n nudged. “But if you miss your mom’s cooking, ask her the recipe of any dish and I’ll try to learn it.”

“Really?” Ningning’s hope went off the roof. “Is that ok?”

“Mhm” Y/n patted her head. “I am your manager, at least, and I’ll be your brother, at most.”

Ningning leaned her head on Y/n’s shoulder, her voice small. “Thanks, Y/n-oppa. For everything. Today was fun.”

He smiled, resting his head against hers. "…this will DEFINITELY be on Dispatch tomorrow."

"Aish, shush it. I'm tired, oppa" Ningning accepted that she will never escape from Y/n's annoying retort.

Y/n chuckled. “Anytime, Ning. You deserve it.”

They stayed like that for a while, just enjoying the quiet moment as the city buzzed around them. Eventually, Ningning perked up again, a mischievous glint back in her eyes.

“Oh, and by the way,” she said with a smirk, “don’t think I’ve forgotten about Mindoogie. You know she’s going to be extra nosy when we get back, right?”

Y/n groaned. “Can we not?”

“Nope,” Ningning giggled, standing up and stretching. “It’s too much fun watching you squirm.”

As they made their way back to the dorm, Y/n couldn't help but wonder if Ningning had a point about Winter. The thought lingered in his mind, but for now, he was just happy that Ningning was back to her usual self. And if teasing him about Winter made her day a little better, then he could live with that—for now.

#aespa #aespa x reader #kpop #aespa giselle #aespa karina #aespa ningning #aespa winter #karina #ningning #giselle #aespa x you #aespa x male reader #kim minjeong #ning yizhuo #yoo jimin #aeri uchinaga #x reader

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skyward-floored · 1 year ago

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Since you're still doing requests, I would like to ask for more Hyrule and/or Four. Maybe Four could help him with his homework or something?

Here is more Hyrule and Four (and some Legend too). Hope you enjoy! And thanks for the patience XD

————————————————————

“...And then a monster rose up from the water, with lots of ten... tenti... ten... tenicles..? ...Legend?”

“Tentacles.”

“Right, tentacles. Ten-ta-cles, that tried to grab the hero. But with one swing of his sword, the hero sliced... is that how you say it?”

“It’s an ‘eye’ sound actually, but you were close.”

“Oh. So... the hero sliced the ten-ta-cles away, and the monster couldn’t catch him, no matter how hard he tried. A long battle en... ensued, all while the waves roared, and rain poun-ded on the ship. But the hero rid the beast of all his tentacles, and it fell into the sea with a dying roar. The hero had slain the monster, and... finally earned the treasure hidden in the ship.”

Hyrule closed the book with a proud look on his face, having reached the end of the chapter, and Legend grinned over at him from his spot on the floor.

“Nice job Roolie, you barely stopped,” he complimented, and the tip of Hyrule’s ears turned pink.

“I’ve been practicing,” he said shyly, and set the book he’d been reading from on the table. “Thanks for helping, Legend.”

“No problem.”

Hyrule smiled again, and flopped back on his bed, a warm feeling in his middle. He was getting really good at reading— he’d practically caught up to Wild’s level, and kept making progress, especially with Legend’s help. Soon enough he’d be able to read books without needing anyone to help with the big words.

It felt... nice. To learn.

The bedroom door creaked, and Hyrule and Legend looked up, their littlest brother padding in with a blanket trailing behind him.

“Four? I thought you were supposed to be napping,” Legend scolded, and Four blinked, then walked by without sparing him a glance. “Ugh. Moooommm, Four escaped his nap again,” Legend called, getting to his feet and walking out into the hallway.

He continued to talk as he walked away, voice fading down the hallway, and Hyrule peered over at Four, the younger boy watching him in silence.

Hyrule swallowed at his intense gaze. He didn’t really have a lot of experience with little kids like Four, and was still getting used to the whole little brother thing.

Four was nice of course, but he was also kind of... strange. He didn’t talk much, but when he did he was weirdly well-spoken for a four-year-old, and Hyrule often found him sitting in odd places with an ear pressed to the wall. Between that and adjusting to just having younger siblings in general, Hyrule honestly didn’t know how to interact with him most of the time.

And now he was staring. At him.

Four, oblivious of Hyrule’s thoughts, stared at him another few moments, then went over to his bed and tried to climb up onto it. His legs were too short though, and he frowned, trying to claw his way up the blanket Malon had made for Hyrule.

“Hey, hey careful!” Hyrule said, and Four stopped and looked at him, tilting his head.

“Sorry,” Four said. He looked at the bed, then blinked at Hyrule hopefully. “Can you help?”

Hyrule blinked back, then after a moment’s hesitation, slowly leaned over and picked Four up. He gingerly set him on the bed, and Four smiled as he sat down, stretching out his legs and wiggling his toes.

“Thank you,” Four said, hugging his blanket to his chest.

Hyrule nodded, settling back down in his spot, and watched him in confusion as he sat there, looking idly at the patterns on Hyrule’s blanket.

“Um... Four, I thought you were supposed to be in your bed napping?” Hyrule said hesitantly. He wasn’t sure what to do here.

Four frowned, and turned his head away to look at the wall. He didn’t say anything for a minute, then suddenly flopped backwards, his head landing on Hyrule’s lap and making him jump.

Hyrule looked down at him, and Four looked up, a sad expression forming on his face.

“...I got lonely,” he said quietly.

“Oh.”

Hyrule could relate to that. He’d spent most of his life feeling lonely.

Four curled up more with his head still in Hyrule’s lap, and Hyrule gave it a hesitant pat, Four snuggling up to him. His little brother was a ball of heat, and Hyrule began to relax as Four’s eyes drooped, running another hand over his head.

“Well... you can stay here I guess,” Hyrule said quietly, and Four smiled as he closed his eyes. “So long as Mom says it’s okay. Then you won’t be lonely.”

“Thank you Roolie,” Four whispered, and Hyrule felt a weird lurch of warmth in his stomach at the words.

He grabbed the blanket and set it more over Four as his little brother began to drift off, and Hyrule leaned back, watching as Four quickly fell asleep.

He supposed he would sit here and read for a while longer.

Legend came stomping back into the room a few minutes later, and Hyrule frantically shushed him when he opened his mouth, gesturing to the sleeping kid on his lap.

“...oh. Well I guess napping there is as good as anywhere else,” Legend said with shrug. “Good job Hyrule.”

Hyrule nodded, and Legend left again to tell their mom he’d found where Four went off to. He paused before he left the room though, and looked back at Four and Hyrule, the latter smiling hesitantly at the kid in his lap.

Legend smiled himself, then quietly shut the door behind him.

#i haven’t written them younger like this in a bit so this was fun #little four <3 #Incredibles au #Incredibles au fic #linkeduniverse #lu hyrule #lu four #fic #answers from the floor #lovely gryphonlover #writing from the floor

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theharmonious13 · 6 months ago

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Trial of the Double Feature

Omg I love the Blurple background to honour Tsuno and Kamimura

So unreal to see the 'death portraits', Tsuno's stab trap holes and Kamimura's blood coming out of his mouth and subtle blood along the neck because of his sweater 😩

Poor Watari and Ken are inbetween two podiums of the deceased 😩

~~~

Based on the layout... if we are to assume every survivor will end up between two deceased podiums that leaves Watari, Ken, Mai, Hama, Wada, Hiroaki and Okazaki alive

Meaning Yanagi, Ojima and Tamba are getting killed off next

Probably won't happen but I LOVE theorising based off of visual elements

(Note: After learning Okazaki dies this theory is debunked immediately but I like to have fun okay? 😭😂)

~~~

Danganronpa rules for who escapes, makes sense

Omg Tamba accusing Wada, so naive but you're ded to me anyway Tamba 😩

Hanano getting coy... *yes*

I love how Mai, Yanagi, Ojima and Hiroaki agreed straight away that Wada was telling the truth and that stabbing Okazaki was deserved

Watari popping off with the voice acting and raw emotion, being on Wada's side, calling him her friend 🥺

Ken telling Tamba not to talk about Kamimura that way... thank you for showing respect

Ken saying Kamimura wasn't weak 🥺

Hama telling Wada to breathe/they just have to clear his name, he can understand what he's going through and it's a very sweet moment

Ken jabbing at Tamba (I'm using the 'exactly what it sounds like' in regards to the 3D printer' as an example) is what I live for now

Wada yelling at Tamba is deserved

Man I'm really hating how accusatory Tamba is even though this literally happens every trial

Hama guarding Wada going to the bathroom omg he's so sweet guys I love their dynamic

Why does Hiroaki even care about the above lol

Okazaki accusing Ken of murdering Kamimura and everyone else dog piling him... knew this was coming but I hate this so much anyway

DON'T INTERRUPT KEN WHEN HE DOESN'T GET A CHANCE TO BUD IN, LIKE EVERY TRUAL

I give Okazaki the middle finger while she spurts out this stupid theory

'Stop talking like you know me! Or him, for that matter! You don't know shit about either of us!' YES KEN (and voice actor) POP OFF (especially at Okazaki lmao)

Okazaki claiming to be Ken's therapist is 💀 especially after she said she was his guide councillor which is very different...?

Body discovery announcement came in clutch LET'S GO - Wada and Ken didn't kill their besties

'The infernal energy coming out of that room was disrupting my arm's structural integrity' Hama 😂

ANXIETY ATTACK? Ken nooooo

OKAZAKI WE HAVE SELF PRESERVATION HERE PLEASE, ALOT OF THE CAST THINK BADLY OF THEMSELVES

Hiroaki being blunt about the self harm isn't exactly tactful but needed for the trial

Hama says he was bopped on the head, Okazaki replying with 'he wasn't bopped' 😂

Hama saying Okazaki being in the chemlab was a violation and her agreeing 😂

Tetro is teaching me new words like flunitrazepam (also why was Okazaki keeping an eye on it, sus)

I'm with Watari, THEY HAD CYANIDE?

I've been wondering if the killer took Kamimura's tongue as a trophy too, can we just body check the entire cast right now please? Lmao

'Finally! It was poison!' Good for you Tamba but why did it have to be so ironic that it was on Kamimura's case that he couldn't shut you down 😭

Hiroaki just admitting he was going to kill himself and replying with 'why are you looking at me like that's 😭

Means Tamba was wrong about the poison though hehe, thanks Hiroaki

Yeah Tamba had a blonde moment, I'm on Okazaki's side for this one being annoyed at her

Poor Tamba is cooked, at this rate she's definitely not surviving unless Von wanted to do the stereotypical mainline Danganronpa games survivor cast archetypes trope 😭

'How did they get into Kamimura's room?' guys we LITERALLY just mentioned the 3D printed room key 😭

Omg I'm one of the biggest Hayashigeki shippers out there BUT THIS ARGUMENT IS AWESOME! I AM THRIVING! Well written for both characters and there's been chapters worth of tension stock piled out until now that they need to work through together hehe

Why are we assuming Kamimura knew about the second key? Anyways

KEN AND KAMIMURA (wholesomely and shippingly) SLEPT TOGETHER 🥺

'Do we have a pickpocket in here?' Stares intensely at Okazaki

Wada freaking out about not solving Tsuno's case, thanks guys for solving it anyway 😭♥️

If Kamimura somehow built the trap without Ken noticing that would be messed up (I've thought about Tsuno killing Kamimura because of the fandom but not vice versa)

I really want to know if Tsuno was the intended target or not, if she wasn't it'll be even more sad

I love everyone telling Tamba to shut up, especially Mai 😭

Tamba really needs to stop gunning for Ken or Imma get mad 💀

Man all of the resentment/arguments are coming out of this trial

Yanagi you don't want the reputation of throwing off trials but we're doing it a third time, that establishes a pattern 😭

'If you don't tell me where you were last night you've lost all my trust' Mai omg that sentence went HARD

Omg Yanagi was trying to get into the locked room, please don't tell me he's going to get executed for admitting it 😭

WATARI AND HAMA ARE BECOMING FRIENDS, I actually jumped for joy when I heard Hama say he was watching Watari practice fire dancing in her room

That's very vivid description from the Hall Overlord, I do have to wonder if she just so happened to peek out at all the right times and then continue to prep for the murder

Here we go, Tamba where you at 😭😂

I proceed to be so engrossed in the trial that I have no comments, I am fully obsessed

I don't want to think Tsuno is implicated, but if there isn't a second key (which there obviously isn't) then logically it makes alot of sense for her to be involved with the pre existing alibis 😩

Gets engrossed in the trial again

Okazaki has a coat THAT'S HOW IT DIDN'T GET SEEN

WE ARE ONTO YOU OKAZAKI

We have less than 20 minutes yet PLEASEEEE ISTG THIS BE THE LAST SUSSED PERSON

'Okazaki was patrolling' Nah bitch more like moving around freely without anyone suspecting you ✨

'Can you open your coat then?' OJIMA YES

Blood in the coat

SHE'S GETTING PANICKY AND BACKED INTO A CORNER, OMG MY PRAYERS MAY BE ANSWERED

OKAZAKI IS SNAPPING!? WHAT IS KONKONKONKON

FACE REVEAL WHATTTTTTT

SHE'S BEAUTIFUL! AND HAS A PAW EARRING!? OMG THE WHOLE SUIT IS BLOODY OMG

SHE'S A COMIC BOOK VILLAIN? THE EDITING OF HER NEW SPRITE/CG MOVING OMG

SHE'S MOCKING THEM FOR BEING SLOW TO SOLVE IT!? I'm actually amused at this oml

THE MUSIC IS SO DERPY, I FEEL LIKE I'M IN UNDERTALE RN HELP

'A band of dimwits this easy to kill!' Omg why am I loving Okazaki at her killer reveal

WATARI IS SO UPSET AND RIGHTFULLY SO

The way she said Oni boy got me crushing a little bit 😳

Okazaki giving vital hints because she wanted to create an extremely interesting murder case makes a TON of sense

Gdi I was fairly confident it was Okazaki but I should have been ride or die on it lol

If she somehow ISN'T THE KILLER and reveals a truth bomb right now my jaw will drop to the floor

She's talking like Gundham Tanaka and I'm loving it

THE PHANTOM THEIF OF NAGOYA!? WAS SHE TSUNO'S GREATEST ENEMY OUTSIDE OF THE KILLING GAME TOO BECAUSE SHE'S LITERALLY THE ULTIMATE SUPERHERO? THEY'RE LITERALLY BOTH FROM THE SAME AREA

OMG I WAS RIGHT

I had headcanoned she was a crime doer outside of the killing game because of the gun ownership BUT OMG IT WAS SO OBVIOUS ALL ALONG WHY DID I NOT SEE IT

WADA IS GOING TO STAB HER AGAIN, AND KEN CAN JOIN TOO

KAMIMURA MUST HAVE SEEN HER DOING SOMETHING SUS AND HAD TO BE KILLED BECAUSE WITNESS TESTIMONY

I love Okazaki's monologue so much you don't understand

She's kinda crushing on Tsuno desperately wanting attention? Must be a small town crime doer who WANTS to Tsuno to be her rival because it's not her talent

THAT LAUGH VOICE ACTING WAS AWESOME OMG

She called Hiroaki a Dunk Ass 😭😂

WADA POP TF OFF!

Tsuno cared about Kamimura and that drew her attention... Tsuno died for love? DELUSIONAL SHIP COMING ON?

Harada inspired her by saying 'life is short' and 'Kamimura is short too!' Okazaki omg you cannot be serious 😭😂

I NEED SOMEONE TO TRANSCRIBE OKAZAKI'S MURDER CASE RECAP BECAUSE I CANNOT EVEN RIGHT NOW

'When the temperature started dropping and it was clear that someone had to die I thought hey, now is my chance to end a long and tumultuous character arc!' WOAHHHHHH 😂

Okazaki calling Kamimura a Sad Sack 😩

OKAZAKI SPRITE IN THE TRIAL ROOM

THEY CUT HER SUMMARY SHORT, JUSTICE HAS BEEN SERVED 😂😂😂

Or almost lol, loved the intermission anyway

She admitted Hasegawa is smarter than everyone which is a... compliment in a weird and twisted way?

Okazaki calling Wada a sad little loser 😭

KEN BEAT UP OKAZAKI LETS FUCKING GO

WADA WAS GONNA GO TOO AND I WAS THERE FOR IT

Omg Okazaki said Watari could have been the perfect sidekick one day

Watari said she will NEVER be like her and she HATES her this is the angst I needed omg I LOVE IT

POOR WADA, KEN AND WATARI THOUGH THEY ARE ALL EMOTIONALLY DESTROYED

Okazaki's about to get the most mid execution like Celeste because she's so outlandish

Okazaki wanted to give each individual student a goodbye? How strange and unexpected

'Nishi, in our next life, we'll be foxes okay?' 😭😭😭

'In every life after, I will follow that flame too' At least Okazaki genuinely liked Watari 😭

Midas Touch

Dr Haruka is absolutely disgusted by Okazaki's actions 😂

Torturing is quite the dubbed down word for what Okazaki did lol

Is Okazaki's name Yume? Does Dr Haruka know Okazaki?

Dr Kan was disappointed Tsuno didn't kill and Dr Haruka saying Tsuno didn't seem to be the type to crack shows how strong she was 💪

This was the most unique execution I've ever seen, I love it alot

Cheap motive? Wonder what it is

Kan put on the music at the trial? LOL

264 - Regulation Review

No don't modify the body discovery it comes in clutch THEY'LL GET THROWN OFF AND BE HEAVILY MISLEAD 😭

Monomoko was smart with turning off the cold tbh

Monomoko has got ALOT of dark splotches now oml

OKAZAKI WAS DR HARUKA'S KID? AND SHE WAS JUST UPSET WITH HOW SHE DID REGARDING THE KILLING GAME INSTEAD OF LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE ABOUT HER *CHILD!?*

Okazaki's name is Yume... or is that a dead name maybe? Disapproving parent my god...

She's trying to get Dr Kan's child in the killing game, probs because she hates Dr Kan lol 😭

265 - Tactical Retreat

Takeshi too overwhelmed, how relatable...

He finally spaced out again 😩

266 - Apology Tour

Wonder how this cat fight will go

She's done with Yanagi? NOOOOOOOO

Mai is going on her vigilante and angsty arc

Tamba's apology is making me almost cry ngl

Mai called her Rui 🥺

267 - Grieving Process

Wada's so drained, my poor boi

Hiroaki talking to Tsuno in front of Wada will be good for both of them I think, hopefully they can bond more because of this

Wada says I love you to Tsuno again 🥺😭

HE MADE WADA NEW CLOTHES? OMG

SOFT CLOTHES FOR WADA, HIROAKI IS SO THOUGHTFUL

HUG!? YESSSSSSSS

HE WOULD ALSO GIVE WADA A HAIRCUT? WHAT WOULD IT LOOK LIKE? NEW SPRITE? OMG MAKEOVER? OMG I NEED TO SEE IT NOW

#tetro danganronpa #tetro danganronpa pink #tetro pink #danganronpa tetro #tetro danganronpa spoilers #dr tetro

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monsieuroverlord · 1 year ago

Text

Letterless preview pages for Marvel Voices: Pride a.k.a. X-Men: The Wedding Special have been posted.

Main Wedding Story by Kieron Gillen, art by Rachael Stott

Betsy Braddock/Rachel Summers story by Tini Howard, art by Phillip Sevy

Wolverine + crew story by Tate Brombal, art by Emilio Pilliu

Rogue/Gambit story by Wyatt Kennedy, art by Jenn St. Onge

Emma Frost Pre-marriage counseling story by Yoon Ha Lee, art by Stephen Byrne

source here

Personal thoughts:

I gotta say, I'm still feeling incredibly ambivalent about this book.

I mean, a Mystique/Destiny wedding is great! Ya love to see it and its long overdue, but I think this would've been better served as a one-shot alongside the main pride story this rather, rather than in place of it.

Most of these stories sound really fun, like for example: a Rogue/Gambit side story involving a wedding band mishap! That sounds hilarious!

But, for a Pride-centric issue, its really lacking in the Pride department. No one outside of the x-books this year, and even the x-couples are lacking!

I mean, to name a few: Northstar and Kyle, Rictor and Shatterstar, Iceman and whoever he's dating right now (lol), Cerebella and Escapade, Akihiro and Aurora (he's still bi, straight-passing relationship or not), the list goes on!

I don't know, I'm just frustrated. The stories themselves seem fine, its just the branding/packaging that's rubbing me the wrong way, if that makes sense.

Except the Wolverine story. We literally have a confirmed/canon queer member of the snikt fam (who, at bare minimum, has had a flirtation with Mystique as well), and he's still ded :(

Like, if they wanted a Wolverine-centric story, why not have Gabby finally explore her sapphic feelings for that girl on the bus? Let her have a little heart-to-heart with Akihiro, drag Logan to a Pride parade (then, he accidently gets roped into a side quest involving a group of short trans-mascs, ending with Logan buying them a round of beers). My point is, there are ways to add your money-maker character into stories while still respecting your target audience.

I don't know. My feelings are complicated.

#marvel #marvel comics #marvel voices pride #destiny #irene alder #mystique #raven darkholme #emma frost #rachel summers #askani #betsy braddock #rogue #remy lebeau #pixie #meggan puceanu #anole #victor borkowski #bling!#indra

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lohotine · 1 year ago

Note

Request: can you make White lily as shadow milk cookie and Fem!reader as a loyal servant to White lily

Pure vanilla,hollyberry,golden cheese and Dark cacao is gonna see this and Say NNNNOOOOO!!!(ded💀)

AN: When you say White Lily as Shadow Milk, I think you're talking about like.. possession? So like, shadow milk is using White Lily's body? If this isn't what you meant, I'm sorry 🙏 If you want, you can request again and ill work on another one. Um but.. I think I did an okay job... enjoy ☆

White Lily as Shadow Milk Cookie x Fem! Servant

Oneshot (headcanons below)

Warnings: Def not canon, slight remarks of possessiveness

-Devotion-

The purist white hair, a dedicated heart, and the feint smell of Liles. Those were the feature of the person before you. This person should have been her; One of the Ancient Heros, and yet, that was not the case. This was somebody else... A certain blue jester of decite.

You knew this, and yet you still followed them so willingly, and so blindly. Was it because of the promise to rule the world... or was it for some other reason?

"Oh button, are you ready?" The person would ask.

White Lily was known for her violet eyes, the ones that held a passion for protecting all of cookie kind. This person was lacking that, though.

These eyes were an electric and sky blue, and the only things behind them was the hope to see the world burn.

And, it was in that moment that you finally realized why you would follow Shadow Milk like this.

It was because of the way he could make your heart flutter, like no other person had been able to.

"I am," You'd respond while taking White Lily's hand.

The cookie would smile at you with that crazed expression before appearing on a stage with you.

"I know that all of you have been waiting to see the star of the show, and here I am at last!"

White Lily would do a bow dedicated towards the audience.

That audience being the four other Ancient Heros.

Discussion between the others would begin to stir. Some were filled with feat, other hate, and a few, utter confusion.

Pure Vanilla knew who was on stage instantly, and he would look at you with a concerned look. "That person is not White Liliy," He'd explain.

Of course, you were already aware of this.

"Oh dearest dove-" White Lily would say while taking your hand.

"Are you ready to test your devotion?"

《☆》 Fin

Headcanons

You were originally loyal to White Lily

And you noticed the change in behavior and eye color immediately

He saw something special in you and decided to keep you around

Was very glad he did because you're amazing!

Calls you things like dove, doll, button, dear, devotee

Probably likes to dance with you

Like, box steps and things like that

You have to listen to his rants about the other ancients

Hated P.V in particular

100% manipulates you

Uses sweet talk to get what he wants

Will complain if you don't play dolls with him

The ancients have to lose.

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mercuryflan · 2 months ago

Note

Saw you posted more delicious art for me to eat—

So, I have been wondering- AND THINKING! And putting my brain together like puzzle pieces, and then-

BOOM!

A Cookie run kingdom and Minecraft crossover— HEAR ME OUT! I need your opinion on this- So, picture this, we already know about two continents in crk, right? Crispia and beast-yeast. BUT, What if, there was another continent! Like a hidden continent that no other cookies knew about except the cookies that are living in the continent! So, our Female lead, aka, my oc- the player who built an entire empire to herself- decided to explore! She wanted to go see the other two continents and explore and hopefully meet different cookies and make friends!

(If you don't play Minecraft, you can try searching but, I just want your opinion— idk why I choose only you I just don't know 😭)

I'm planning on making a fanfiction of it but I still need to tweak a few things. And because sometimes, my motivation might as well be a walking ded

BOOOOI-👏 Imma hold ur hand when I say this, but yo I LOVE MINECRAFT! >:D I literally just finished watching a horror gameplay from it on YouTube just now. I don't play it tho but I am up to date with the new updates :D✨✨

Okay back to ur idea >:D

I absolutely love reading stuff from writers/artists that mixes different medias together like a crossover one or even better indulging on the what if scenarios if scenario A & B happens, I EAT ALL OF THOSE CONTENT LIKE A FINE DINER MEAL!! GOBBLE THEM ALL KIRBY STYLE >:D no matter how short or long they are😌👌✨✨✨ (an example how I basically read all of the stories in the crk self aware and reader tags here (⁠づ -▽-;) their all just really cool, thats also how I got inspired to draw mine as well

Look the fact that u mentioned Minecraft together with cookie run already in one sentence peaked my interest, cause imma be honest I dunno how it's gonna go, which excites me even more cause YOU👉 have an idea for it >:D and I would love to see it exist on the internet as well cause now I am also curious and intrigued by just the concept of it /ᐕ)/ I'm also curious how the cookies would interact and compare how thier own continent works compared to the Minecraft one :O since funny enough the cookies are all flat then theres Minecraft where everything is made of blocks haha,

Anyways if ur asking for my opinion I say go for it /ᐕ)/ this is a cool concept that I'd be interested to see exist into reality no matter which genre it's gonna go✨ for the motivation part, I say take your time frfr, it's best not to force yourself to produce something you like in times of burnout, don't worry if it takes too long 👏take👏your👏time👏 when needed( ᐕ) I've tried to train my mindset on my current works like this (⁠づ -▽-) and ngl I still feel guilty sometimes that I don't produce enough or draw quickly in time BUT, just always remember that if people are really interested with something then time is not something to worry about,cause theres like a lot of stuff out there to keep people entertained, and once a writer/artist updates once in a while it feels like a package just arrived your doorstep for FREE like bruh how cool it that

#question&answer #answering this as well cause I want others to see the concept as well >:D #cookierun kingdom #also hard emphasis on the take your time and don't burn urself out by forcing to work something your not in the mood to work on that day #as much as how we act lively and whimsy here online I understand for a lot of us to take too long to work on our projects cause ngl we're #not giving ourselves enough credit that we are pretty much very busy outside the internet with our lives then at the same time just #work on our own self indulgent project at the same time SO YEAH DEFINITELY TAKE UR TIME✨ and just let ur idea run naturally like water

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sinisterexaggerator · 6 months ago

Text

Tech and Hondo Ohnaka (Part 4)

Rated: Teen and up (a rare general audiences fic on my part.)

Warning: Pain mention.

Fic Summary: Tech is plummeting toward death, yet he is spared, all thanks to a Weequay pirate who was simply in the wrong place at the right time, depending.

Word count: 1.9k

Notes: This is a kind of crack / AU scenario. I like the idea of Hondo being the one to encounter Tech after his fall. The idea was definitely inspired by Phee's line at the end of season 2: "Well, don't go running off with any pirates or smugglers while you're gone,." :) Don't take this too seriously, though at the same time I tried to make it plausible. The main point of this was to have fun with Tech and Hondo ribbing each other in their own way. I love both of these characters, and I am excited to see what you guys think.

*This is a shorter chapter, but it sets things up for what will happen next, and it felt right to stop where I did.

Chapter 1, 2, 3 | Read on Ao3

“Nu good, ensufferable know-et-all! Lousy carbon copy! A bold-faced liar, tinking he can hide de truth from me! Hondo!”

The Weequay ranted and raved as he made his way through Eriadu’s foilage, once more employing the use of his vibrocutlass. He hacked at those bits and pieces of plants that dared to hinder his forward march, having left the clone no more than thirty minutes prior. Hondo had nearly traversed a quarter kilometer before he stopped, allowing himself to cool off and for a clearer head to prevail. He was better than this, he mused, though it was about the principle; how dare this so-called soldier take him for a fool!

“He should have told me from de outset,” he muttered, his chest rising and falling more slowly as he caught his breath. With eyes asquint, the pirate gazed around himself, noting that it was nearly dark, and that he was all alone out here, minus one bruised and battered brainiac.

“Ugh, now de creepy crawlies will come out,” he grumbled, missing his desert home more and more each and every minute of each and every hour of each and every day, wanting only a stiff drink back at his beloved base on Florrum—too bad that would never happen now, left to roam the galaxy with the remainder of those men that were loyal to him.

Hondo was not stupid; he knew that they were growing restless; this job was meant to be a way for them to recoup that which was lost thanks to the Empire, only now it appeared he would be lucky to escape with his life—a feeling that clone must also be experiencing—the pirate sighed a deeply exaggerated sigh.

“What tu du, what tu du…” It was a rhetorical question, one he often asked himself, even if he already knew the answer, that pesky sense of honor returning to him at a most inconvenient time.

“He es dead weight, liable tu get me killed. Et would be easier tu steal a ship witout de extra baggage…” The pirate began to pace, aware that he was talking to himself, bits of dirt and dried leaves becoming displaced as he walked to and fro, his blade bouncing lightly against his shoulder.

“Ah, but he has a family—and let us not forget de reward!” Hondo reminded himself, suddenly finding it in his heart to be of help once more.

“Hopefully he es … still alive, unlike my men,” he offered to the forest, turning about face. Sheathing his sword, he felt he did not need it, having already cleared a path his first time through. “Ef not, wellll, one cannot say I ded not try.”

---

Though he felt destined for an unfavorable outcome, Tech had the heart of a soldier, and the ability to give up was not something within his wheelhouse. Trundling onward, it was easy to track the Weequay, for he was doing a poor job of hiding his trail. Tech doubted he was even attempting to, so angry had he been from the moment he left camp. He supposed he had every right to be, as he had not been completely forthright.

This had been his fear—to be left behind should the pirate learn the entirety of the truth—wondering if anything would be different had he come clean in the beginning. Transparency, of course, brought trust, yet he had taken quite a risk in keeping quiet. In other words, he should have known better—he did know better—but getting off Eriadu was more important, and so he carried on, even when his body was on the verge of failing him.

With the planet’s sun giving off its last rays, darkness fell, leaving Tech bathed in glimmers of moonlight. Peering out into the darkness through his cracked heads-up display, he stiffened at the sound of footsteps from somewhere ahead, wondering if it might be some kind of animal, or worse—more TK troopers that were out to capture him.

Taking cover, the commando stilled, curtailing his arrhythmic breathing the best he could. He waited for his enemy to show itself, thankful that he still had the element of surprise.

When at last a figure appeared on his infrared scanner, Tech took aim, firing off two shots in the direction of this would-be adversary. He was only able to make out the heat signature of the individual, though he wore what appeared to be a helmet—a possible lone TK who would undoubtedly call for backup if he had the chance.

“You imbecile, you shot me! Me! I thought you said you were smart!” the voice of the aggrieved called out from between the trees. “You are lucky dat Weequay have blaster resistant skin, you ex-republic dog, but you can rest assured you will be paying for de damages tu my very expensive, very valuable, Wroonian coat!”

Tech immediately holstered his blasters, though it was too little, too late. He had not expected to ever see the pirate again, trusting he had been left for dead. He was glad to be wrong, if only just this once, presently standing in an awkward manner as he attempted to regain his equanimity. “I thought you to be an enemy,” he stated plainly.

“Nu, just de idiot who has come tu rescue you. Again,” Hondo gruffly complained, dusting off his lapel. There was an obvious singe mark across it, and another along his right sleeve.

“I must admit that this is a surprise.”

“Tu you and me both,” Hondo replied snidely.

Tech had nothing to say, simply waiting for the pirate’s next move. If he had learned anything in their short time together, it was that he had a flare for theatrics and was sure to take over the conversation as he saw fit; he was correct in that assumption.

“But unfortunately for me, and fortunately for you, I have a heart.” The pirate felt deceived by his own shortcomings, wafting a hand dismissively for him to follow. “Now come, hurry, I was nearly tu de lommite mine when I had tu turn around and fetch you. Et es already dark, however dis may be en our favor.”

“Obviously, the cover of darkness is a boon in this situation,” Tech agreed.

“Dat es what I just said,” Hondo snapped, though the clone remained quiet, refusing to buy into what would quickly become a game of tit for tat. He felt exchanging quips, in this case, was not worth the effort, and that it would only prolong the rogue’s sour mood. He was not, after all, one of his brothers, and he was unsure what future repercussions might await him should he continue to engage.

“I am ready when you are.”

“I am ready now,” Hondo shot back, turning on the heel of his boot. He hastened his departure, leaving Tech to keep up as quickly as his legs would allow.

---

Without Hondo, and due to the failure of his equipment, Tech would not have known just how close the lommite mine truly was or its precise location. Soon, they reached the safety of rolling hills that spread into mountains, a large structure built into the mass of rock looming straight ahead.

From their refuge beneath a stone projection, they could observe that beyond a set of open hydraulic doors was a spacious bay, loaded with an assortment of mining equipment. There were bucket excavators; hauler trucks; rock dusters, and crushing machines, all serving a distinct purpose. More importantly, there were cargo ships, ground cars with treads, and speeder bikes most likely belonging to the Empire—or the employees of the facility itself—though Tech could hardly make out anything but nebulous lines.

“Just dere, you see? Eriadu Mining and Shipping. Dey have large industrial transport ships dat leave every hour on de hour, and a rotating staff of nearly one hundred men, not tu mention droids! Of course, dat does not account for de Imperial personnel lurking about … Just our luck, ah?”

“Indeed,” was the only answer the clone afforded him, having been distracted by the heat signatures of two sentient beings that were out of bounds. They were skulking about just as they were, though much closer to the entrance of the mine. “I believe we are not the only ones here.”

“Yes, yes! Dere are many people! Are you suuuure you are de genius you say you are?” Hondo probed.

“Unsurprisingly, you misunderstand,” Tech informed him. “There are two individuals lurking nearby the entrance. It appears they are planning to sneak inside.”

“What? Where!” Hondo asked, raising his voice. Realizing his own mistake, he lowered it to an excitable whisper. “I du not see anyon—more troopers?” he asked, spotting two white dots amid the darkness.

Tech attempted to zoom in with his heads-up display, though the screen temporarily blacked out; the clone held his breath until it came back online. “No.”

Though unable to clearly see the pair below, they were not behaving like Imperial soldiers, and Tech was sure of at least one thing—they were not wearing buckets on their heads.

"I was sure they had escaped off-world," Tech said, more to himself, noting that Saw was down one man. There had been several Partisans in total, though now he only spotted two lifeforms below.

“And of whom are you speaking?” The pirate was becoming increasingly annoyed.

“Saw Guerra. I mentioned him when discussing the events that transpired at Raven’s Peak.”

“De man wit de most beautiful sister…” Hondo trailed off, reminiscing on what he knew of him and his family; he remembered delivering weapons to them at Skywalker’s behest, having been paid handsomely for his services. “Dis es an interesting development! Perhaps he may offer us a distraction while we find a ride out of dis place, ah? Or maybe he would be willing tu work tugether. Four heads are better dan two, nu matter ef one of dose heads es presumably smarter.”

Tech ignored the comment about Saw's sibling, having never known him to have a sister. "Saw will help himself and his cause, disregarding even the soundest advice if it interferes with his own plans," Tech declared with confidence; he knew this to be true based on his most recent experience. While presenting a logical counterargument against the destruction of the Imperial base, Saw stated it was, "for the greater good," even after being told that the lives of clones were at stake. It was safe to say he had lost some, if not all, of Tech's respect.

“Dat es terrible news…” Hondo stroked the length of his frills, contemplating the situation. “Dough ef we are lucky—and I am lucky—I will be able tu change his mind.”

“I highly doubt—” Tech ended his thought to begin another as the scoundrel rose, worried that the Weequay would also disregard him. “Wait, we should formulate a plan. It is unwise to—”

“—blah blah blah,” Hondo interjected, beginning to make his way downhill. “Are you coming, or du you prefer tu stay here, for I am leaving wit or witout you.”

Tech sighed heavily, standing unsteadily to his feet. Though it was against his better judgement and defied all common sense, he made slow work of following the pirate, unable to shake the feeling they were headed for disaster.

#Hondo Ohnaka #Tech TBB #TBB #The Bad Batch #Star Wars #Fanfiction #My writing #Tech's not dead #Bad Batch AU #Clone Force 99 #Plan 99 #Friends in Low Places #Pirates #Weequay #Eriadu #The Galactic Empire #GFFA #Alternate Ending #Happy Ending

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cr-pisacs-evil-brother · 2 years ago

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Pathologic Bachelor ARG Megapost

This post is a culmination of months of (mostly my own) research into the Bachelor ARG. For far too many days and far too many hours, I’ve been doing my best to solve this, with the help of a few other people. I looked very deep into most Fyodor Vitin posts, played through The Marble Nest several times, looked extensively through the Pathologic wiki, and read/analyzed countless outside sources for this post, and I will link as many of them as I can. (If there are links that you think would help the ARG that you’d like included in here with credit please let me know.) For any people that are credited, an “@” before their name implies that it’s a Tumblr username, while a “u/” proceeding their name implies it’s a Reddit username. I have discovered and analyzed dozens of leads, some of which are more likely to be important or intentional on the part of IPL than others. The primary purpose of this post is to give all of you Pathologic fans new leads and theories to analyze in pursuit of solving the mystery behind this ARG, so many of the things within this post should be looked into further! With this post, I will lay out my findings in a series of sections, all of them having several connections to each other. This post is more than 10,000 words and is not meant to be read all at once, so feel free to read sections, take breaks, re-read sections, or skip around if you'd like. “Observations, Research, Analysis” is a vast majority of this post and consists of observations made about the ARG material, as well as any research I did into those findings that bore fruit, and analysis/connections to other things. The additional notes section consists of some of the conclusions I’ve reached after putting all of my evidence together, as well as some connections I didn't really make in the previous section, but keep in mind they’re still just theories so they could obviously be wrong. I would like to emphasize that I am not a native Russian speaker, but I did have many native Russian speakers helping me along the way, and in particular, I’d like to thank @kurury-chan for her massive help with this. She transcribed the newspaper for me, provided tons of consulting, translated many other Russian sources, and actually went out of the way to go on an irl tour of a certain ARG-related location to see if my theories about it could hold any ground! Because I'm not a native Russian speaker, the sections where I'm required to analyze Russian text (notably the newspaper section) will probably be the least interesting and I'll probably end up making a lot of points that aren't valid. Additionally, I’d like to thank @cryingsyren (who also happens to be my bf) and @ded-not-ded for their help. As for formatting, since Tumblr doesn't have tiered lists for some fucking reason, all main points will be written as bullet points, and any sub-points within that bullet will then have numbered points afterward. For example like this:

The first main point about a topic

Sub-point of the first point

Second sub-point

The second main point about a topic

I'll either do that or I'll do it like this:

First main point

First sub-point First sub-sub-point

Second sub-point

Second main point

Edit 1: I've had to revert much of the Chat text (the font I used for the sub-points above) to regular text because of a formatting glitch that irreversibly changed most of the Chat text to bold, which was very confusing.

Depending on which looks better in the context of the points. Because that formatting is so awkward and clunky I'll try to minimize the use of tiered lists as I convert this from the Google Docs format to the Tumblr Format. Most of the time that I use tiered lists here it's to deal with the character limit Tumblr has on single blocks of text within a post. With that out of the way, let's just get into the post.

Observations, Research, Analysis:

"The Accident" Fyodor Vitin post

The first thing I noticed about the newspaper when I took a good look at it was the use of bolding with certain letters. If you look at the Newspaper you’ll also see ink splattered on the page in several areas, which could be a clue toward noticing the bolded letters, or it could be something else I’ve yet to discover. I knew I wouldn’t be able to transcribe the entire newspaper by myself, not being a Russian speaker (although I’ve just started learning!) so I enlisted the help of @kurury-chan, a native Russian speaker, and she transcribed the entire newspaper for me in Cyrillic. After getting this transcription I went through and spent a couple of days looking for which letters were bolded, writing them down, and coming up with possible translations/meanings. I’ve come up with lots of possible meanings for these, but for many of them I couldn’t figure anything out, and I’d love help if anyone has any idea what they could mean! To me many of them seem like word fragments that are simply missing one or two letters, and so in the document where I list all of the bolded letters I put some words/phrases that are very close to the seemingly fragmented words. Once again keep in mind that, while I’m trying to learn Russian, my understanding of the language is still rather weak, so I may have mistranslated some of these. Another small detail to mention is that there’s a prominent crease on the left side of the paper that runs through a decent portion of the bolded words. First, I’ll start with the bolded letters on the left side of the page. I may have missed a couple, and I may have written some of them down as bolded when maybe they aren’t supposed to be seen as such.

Here is a link to a list of all the letters I think are bolded on the left side, which lines they’re on, and possible meanings, many of which I’ll be discussing here. I will not go individually through what I believe all the bolded letters mean, but I will go through and explain the ones I think are most meaningful and important, as well as some connections I’ve made with them. And here is a link to the original Russian transcription and my best attempt at an English translation.

It’s possible that the crease that runs through the left side of the paper and notably runs through many bolded words somehow denotes that those particular bolded words are special, or perhaps that they should be seen as separate from the other bolded words.

Line 15 has a rather interesting bolded phrase, because it actually appears to make a somewhat coherent 3-word phrase, but one of the words seems to be a surname, “Pepe.” Additionally, the crease on the left side of the page starts right above the word “ПЕПЕЛИЩЕ” in the title, and splits it so that “ПЕПЕ” is separate from the rest of the word. (ПЕПЕ is Pepe in Cyrillic.) If you want to know what the non-Pepe words say, skip to the next bullet point, because the rest of this one is my analysis of the ПЕПЕ part. So, of course, I looked into the name a bit, looking through all notable historical figures with the last name, and found one that I think is of special interest: Guglielmo Pepe. Born in the small ancient town of Squillace, Pepe entered the army at a very young age, and was an Italian commander during the early 1800s, but his military career was fraught with trouble, as he also had rather revolutionary politics, which angered both the government he was serving and many of his peers, and he was exiled on several occasions. Upon Pepe’s return to Italy at the age of 30, he was given the rank of general. After this, the most notable events in his life would largely consist of his attempts at going rogue in revolutionary attempts to change the existing power structure, for which he was usually punished. (It’s also perhaps worth mentioning that his brother was part of the attempted French invasion of Russia.) All of this is to say, Pepe obviously shares some striking similarities to General Block, perhaps the most striking of which is his status as a 30-year-old general, which is an aspect of Block’s character that is highlighted several times. So, of course, I looked into Block’s character a bit more, and discovered that in the Russian version of the game he is called “General Ash” instead of “General Ashes.” “Strange,” I thought, until I saw that in Russian, Ash is “Пепел” which is pronounced as “Pepel” for anyone that isn’t familiar with Cyrillic. If we look into it, we do see that the letter after the Пепе is л, but it is notably not bold. This is, if you're counting, two separate times in this paper where the plural for ash, пепелище, is split up so that only the пепе is emphasized. As for other connections between Pepe and Block, we could look at them both harboring some revolutionary tendencies and being punished for it, both by The Powers That Be and his peers. General Block also tells Artemy that he was born in a town not too dissimilar to the Town on Gorkhon; this is interesting because there are some connections to be drawn between Squillace and Gorkhon, primarily that both of them preserve the beauties of ancient times that have all but been lost to most people. Related to this, it should also be noted that I believe the plot of The Marble Nest was heavily based on the plot of The Seventh Seal, which is the same movie that inspired the character Alexander Block.

The rest of line 15 is also interesting, but I’m not sure exactly what it’s supposed to mean yet. It translates to “Heaven on Pepe” basically. I consider the “Pepe” part to probably be the most important, since there’s a large crease that runs through it, which I think probably denotes a level of importance? The line’s meaning might be related to the fact that “heaven” is sort of a synonym for “utopia,” or the character that Block is based on is the protagonist of a movie that revolves around the ideas of heaven and Christianity, which is something we saw very briefly with Block in Pathologic 1. If you have any ideas please post about them and tag me, or simply comment/reblog this with your ideas!

Line 1 and line 18’s bolded letters both start out with “ов”, and for my English speakers out there it is pronounced sorta like “ove.” ов is interesting because if you translate it as о-в it actually is the shortened form of “island” in Russian. Line 1’s bolded letters read as “ов попо”, and for people not familiar with Cyrillic попо is basically “popo.” There are, apparently, many Popo islands in the world, and I couldn’t find one that I think directly connects to the ARG or Pathologic, but maybe someone else out there will, or perhaps that line has a different meaning to it. As for line 18, it says “ов испустивших” and according to Russian wiktionary, the second word is one letter off from the word “Emitted.” I looked a bit deeper, though, because that didn’t satisfy me (why would they use the incorrect spelling of a word after all?) and I didn’t see much, but I did find two things that used the exact word “испустивших” that interested me: A Saudi Arabian newspaper that has been translated into Russian, as well as a Russian poem from 1777 celebrating the birth of Grand Duke Alexander Pavlovich, also known as Alexander I of Russia. The latter is more interesting to me for numerous reasons, the first one being that it might serve my theory about the connection between line 1 and 15, as line 1’s bolded letters end with попо and line 15’s end with пепе. The connection is weak, too weak for me to make it a separate bullet point, but strong enough for me to want to explain. So, as we know, there is a connection between line 1 and 18, it’s what this whole bullet point is about, and this theory (using the term “theory” loosely) relies on us seeing them as very closely connected. Basically, Alexander I was the ruler of Russia during the French invasion, which is interesting because, if you’ll remember, Guglielmo Pepe’s brother, Florestano Pepe, took part in the French invasion. This, to me, is an interesting connection, but I do admit it’s definitely a reach.

That’s where I’ll stop talking about the bolded letters on the left side of the paper. If you’d like to see what other bolded letters there are, what they could possibly mean, and try to decipher the meaning for yourself please go to my linked Google Doc(s).

As for the right side of the Newspaper, there are some bolded letters, but I can't seem to make much sense out of them, and by this point in my research I was starting to pursue more promising ARG leads, so this section is rather incomplete. Just as a reminder, the right side of the newspaper is an advertisement for a lantern/kerosene shop. I personally think the right side is more interesting than the left for a couple reasons, but most of them are either self-evident or will be discussed later.

The lantern on the right side of the paper is the same model that’s used throughout the Haruspex’s route, but most notably it’s used a ton during The Marble Nest as set dressing. And when I say "a ton" I really mean it.

I also remembered vaguely an unused lantern item found in the game files of Pathologic 2, so I went to the Pathologic wiki to look for it, and surely enough the exact lantern used by Artemy, the one that appears so many times in The Marble Nest, is also an unused item present in the game files. When using console commands to give yourself the item, you’re able to click on it and select the “touch” option, upon which you’ll see the number 6192355001378070 where the name of the item should be, and 6192355001378072 where the touch text should be. I’m not sure exactly what these numbers are supposed to mean; my first thought was that they seemed long enough to be coordinates, so I put them into google maps and it does lead to a location in Russia! Nonetheless, the numbers are a little bit too long to make sense as cohesive coordinates. Still, it might be something worth investigating. You'll see later in this post just how significant numbers and number patterns are in this ARG.

The word used to describe one of the victims of this inferno, “academician,” has sorta interesting connotations in countries that were once part of or heavily influenced by the USSR. This person is referred to as “Mr. F.L.” in the article. This guy is also said to be a historian and a “бытооописателя,” which as you can probably tell by the fact that I’m not using the translated English version is a weird word. Perhaps the strangest thing about this word is the fact that it clearly has 3 o’s where there should only be one. The actual meaning of this word is odd, as it’s very rarely used, and according to all sources I could find (including native Russian speaker and linguistics enthusiast @kurury-chan) it is either an archaic term for a historian or a term meaning “writer of everyday life.” I’m honestly not sure what that means, and at first, I thought it meant something like a blogger. The most complete and coherent definition I could find describes it as “author of works describing everyday life.” A different translation I found seems to say it means something like "chronicler," which I suppose makes some sense.

In the bottom right part of the paper, you will notice what at first appears to be a signature. Admittedly I had almost no hand in this part of the investigation, except for the isolation and upscaling of the text. Most of the work here was done by @cryingsyren with some help from @kurury-chan and @ded-not-ded. Here is the image that I got for them of the text, and here is our current interpretation of it: It at first seemed to be Russian cursive (and it probably is supposed to be), which complicates things quite a bit, and @cryingsyren spent a couple days trying to figure out exactly what it says, (with some help from @kurury-chan) and as far as we can tell it’s four letters, which are separated into either two or three sections. I think we have a decent grasp on what they’re supposed to be in Cyrillic, but the interesting thing is that they do look a lot like both Russian and Latin cursive. I’ll describe them now using what Latin character they look like in quotes followed by what Cyrillic character they look like in parenthesis. The first section is an “M” (М) and a “K” (К), which are very clearly connected. The next section is either an “H” (Н) or an “H” and an “n/u”. We’re not exactly sure whether the H and the n/u are supposed to be connected, but the n/u being lowercase seems to imply it is. The interesting thing about the n/u is that, while it looks like it could be a Latin n or u, it also looks like it could be a Cyrillic и, which is the italicized version of the Russian letter и. It seems all too coincidental that all of the letters they used have almost exact visual counterparts in the Latin alphabet. At the moment our working theory is that it could be initials, and this is where I come in, because for days I knew I recognized the "MK" part of the signature, but I couldn't remember exactly where from until today. For anyone that has played too much Pathologic Classic HD like me, you may recognize the "MK" signature from the center of the loading screen in that game, scrawled in a way that most people wouldn't pay attention to it, and certainly that most people wouldn't have it committed to memory like me. During the roughly 170 hours I've spent playing the game I've probably looked at that MK more than I've looked at my youngest brother. This presents the question, who is MK? Well at first I thought it could be Mr. Katzman, as referenced in the "Mask" post, but that didn't seem right to me. This is when the fact that so much of my brain is Pathologic lore facts came to help again, when I remembered state inquisitor Mark Karminsky, who you may remember as being one of the men people thought would come to the town before Aglaya Lilich showed up. As for the rest of the writing, I'll leave that up to you guys to figure out.

Something to note for later on: We know there to be 19 inquisitors when Pathologic takes place, and in this ARG the number 19 becomes very important with later clues.

"Mask" Fyodor Vitin post

Arguably this is the Fyodor Vitin post I’ve done the most research into, and it eventually led me to develop a very deep and passionate interest in the Buryat peoples that has so far caused me to read several books and around a dozen academic papers about them. I haven’t only done research into the Buryats for this post, though, because although the Buryats are the primary inspiration for The Kin, they’re not the only inspiration. Despite all of this research work, this section will be rather short because I’ve already been through and exhausted most possible leads I’ve found, and this is what remains. Since the post is in English, and I think everyone that follows me presumably knows English (если вы не говорите по-английски, я хвалю вас за то, что вы зашли так далеко) I won’t summarize it, so I’d recommend reading the Vitin post and then coming back.

We see in the post the mask of “Muu Shubuun,” which we’ll immediately notice is almost the exact same mask as is used by the Executors in the game. Actually, in the Marble Nest, you can acquire the Executor mask, and its touch text reads, “The mask of Muu Shubuun, ‘the wicked bird.’ Part of the Reaper costume from the local theatre.” I have found several different sources that lead me to believe this is based on actual Buryat folklore, however, I’ve heard several conflicting accounts on whether Muu Shubuun is an evil spirit that tricks people by taking the shape of a beautiful woman, or if it’s closer to what we see in the game/ARG, but both seem to be documented as existing within sources on the Buryats. I think this confusion between the two likely means the stories and connotations associated with Muu Shubuun vary based on different groups of Buryats. An alternate spelling I’ve seen used is “Mu Shuvuu.” Possibly related to this is the character “Shar Shuvuu” (which means “eagle owl”), who appears in The Marble Nest during the “marriage” scene in the steppe camp behind the cathedral. In fact, a surprisingly high number of NPC characters in this DLC are named after birds.

The phrase used in the post to describe a seasonal festival, “dosoo ba beshē tēēhēē” is where I’ve devoted much of my research, with most of that research being from about a month ago. Only the third word in this phrase, beshē, appears as a kin word in the games as far as I know. However, we can use a method here that people in the Pathologic community have been using for years to figure out the meaning of kin words: Most of the steppe language in the game is based on one of many languages: Buryat mostly, Mongolian sometimes, Tibetan sometimes, and some parts of it also take inspiration from other languages of similar origin to these. A majority of the language seems to be based on Buryat, and many Kin words come straight from the language. A few words in the game seem to be made up entirely by Ice-Pick Lodge, and many are based on words from the aforementioned real languages but tweaked slightly, as if to indicate that the steppe language spawned from those languages but has some distinctive elements. To determine what this phrase means, I tried my best to dig into the languages and find parallels:

“Dosö” in Buryat means “inside”

In Mongolian “dooshoo” means “down”

In Mongolian “ba” means either “and,” “we,” or “sorcery”

In Tibetan, “ba” means “cow”

“Beshē” in the game’s steppe language means either “not” or “other”

The prefix “të-” in Buryat means “to transport”

In Mongolian the prefix “te'e-” also means “to transport”

As for the “-hee” part of the word, I have not found a single source that could tell me what it means. I’ve found several Buryat words that end in “he,” but I can’t seem to find a connection between them strong enough to suggest what it denotes.

Upon first seeing this festival mentioned, I believe I commented somewhere on the Pathologic subreddit that it might be the same one we see in the Kin’s camp behind the cathedral in The Marble Nest. While I’m not 100% convinced still, I also don’t doubt it that much. One interesting thing to note for any people that might wanna investigate this in the future is that I’m pretty sure what we see in the Marble Nest is the same thing that Nara and the Haruspex perform in the abattoir, as they both seem to happen on day 10, and if you look close you can see that Nara is the one that is cut open in The Marble Nest. Seemingly with the Haruspex gone, there is no one that knows the lines and so the ritual doesn’t go as smoothly as it could.

“Messages” Fyodor Vitin Post:

This particular Fyodor Vitin post is the third one, which if you know Ice-Pick Lodge certainly has some importance to it. The post is a series of letters and images, one depicting an Executor and one depicting Voronika Kroy, who's a minor character in Pathologic 2 and the main character in the Pathologic Feverish Feelings ARG. The letters detail how the recipient’s reports about Voronika Kroy have been seen and have started an investigation by the Federal Bureau. What’s most interesting to me are two things: the jumble of (Latin alphabet) letters in the bottom left, and the number used within the letters (the post-card letters in this case).

The number in question is “196-17-1” which is apparently the case number used for the Voronika Kroy investigation. This number will be more important later in relation to other clues. One interesting thing I've found is that the RGB value for 196-17-1 is a deep red.

The jumble of letters at the bottom of the picture is “eiamrucdvrturxoevecid”. It is 21 letters and can be divided up into chunks of 3 or 7 letters. 3 and 7 of course being Ice-Pick Lodge’s favorite numbers. Up until this point, it has been assumed that this is an anagram, and I have no reason to doubt that. It has already been pointed out in the Pathologic subreddit that the words “Executor” and “Corvid” can be found in the anagram, as well as the Latin words “Cura”, “Curare”, “Curari”, “Medici”, and “Vivam.” Credit for finding the Latin words goes to u/apostforisaac who is apparently studying Latin at university! Additionally, u/Own_Sympathy_9814 deduced a possible meaning by unscrambling the anagram and finding “MAVRUD + VERIDIC + EXECUTOR”, which they believe hints toward the answers lying in the Marble Nest (I wrote the entire Marble Nest section of this post before finding their post about that, so I do feel pretty validated by it). Many people have been approaching this anagram, like many other parts of the ARG, as if they have one right answer, and frankly, I just don’t think that’s in the style of Ice-Pick Lodge. I’ll quickly list out some words/phrases I found in the anagram and what they mean/how they could relate. I will also include words that have already been discussed, and they’ll be marked with a “*” so you don’t think I found them. Most of the ones marked with a * I won’t be discussing, as most have already been discussed extensively. I also won’t be discussing the ones that I think probably don’t have much meaning, but I’m including them because it still could be something later on down the road.

I am You don’t actually even have to unscramble the letters to get this one, as the second, third, and fourth letters of the jumble simply spell it out. What's interesting is that the 7 "I am" discourses are a crucial part of the Christian Gospel according to John. The Gospel according to John was an important clue during the Feverish Feelings ARG, which revolved around Voronika Kroy and her Inquisitor father, Peter Kroy. If we're speaking of the four canonical gospels, we must also address the Gospel according to Mark, which coincidentally is the name of an inquisitor that has popped up elsewhere in this ARG. Following this theme, there is actually a non-canonical Gospel According to Peter, which seems too cool to be a coincidence.

Eve This is one you don’t have to unscramble also. Interestingly, Daniil is often compared to a snake, even being called a snake-man in Marble Nest by Shaazgai, a man belonging to the Kin. In the biblical story of Adam and Eve, it is a snake, often thought to be the devil, that convinces Eve to eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Retroviridae The scientific name for a retrovirus. If I was more knowledgeable about biology I would say more, but this seems important.

Rex Iudaeorum Translating in Latin to “King of the Jews,” this was the inscription that allegedly was put on the cross that held Jesus of Nazareth, as detailed by 19:19 in the book of John. Very interesting as Daniil does compare himself to Jesus at least once in the Haruspex route, on the night before Aglaya comes. The Gospels, as discussed before, all detail the life and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The "19" connection is also interesting because of the inquisitor detail, and I'll talk about more of the connections to 19 later in the post.

Cardio Commonly used medically as a prefix for heart conditions, “cardio” is a Latinized version of the Greek “kardia,” which simply means heart. Heart imagery is very common and significant to the Bachelor.

Eva This is similar to the Russian version of Eve.

Corvid*

Cura*

Curare*

Curari*

Medici*

Vivam*

Mavrud*

Veridic*

Executor*

Order Could relate to the committee in The Marble Nest and the fact that after they’re replaced by tragedians the absurd order begins getting sent out to the orderlies.

Carex ericetorum This is a plant that would almost definitely be present in/around the Town on GorkhonThis is a plant that would almost definitely be present in/around the Town on Gorkhon

Creature

Marble Nest:

The Marble Nest, as we know, is very concise, only really lasting half a day in-game. Because of this, the dialogue does tend to feel a lot more intentional, as though the named characters are not necessarily speaking only to The Bachelor but also trying to convey a message to the player. This, of course, is because The Marble Nest takes place inside Dankovsky’s head. If this ARG will be revolving partly around The Bachelor, as it seems to be, then there’s no better place to start than digging into his head, which is why I’ve played so much of the Marble Nest for this.

There are several specific stories/myths/historical figures that are mentioned through Marble Nest. First, we’ll go through some of these.

There is a very interesting conversation that The Bachelor has with Georgiy Kain, where he is trying to justify his decision to lift the quarantine restrictions to The Bachelor, who is rather upset obviously. I’ll cut down and paraphrase most of the dialogue, since if I didn’t this would be much longer, but basically the conversation goes as:

[Georgiy introduces himself, and says he decided to let The Bachelor sleep so that he would have the strength to face the upcoming trial] [Daniil asks if Georgiy lifted the restrictions and let the plague into The Stone Yard] Georgiy: “Quite so. It's plain to me that you are on the verge of shredding me into pieces. But still your wrath. As a great Athenian once said, ‘Strike, if you will, but hear.’” Daniil: “Themistocles, I know. He met a rather gruesome end, by the way. Died of plague.” Georgiy: “No, it was Pericles. You are a learned man, but history is not your strong suit. Which is why you should listen to me. Perhaps it will help you see something that you missed in your previous studies.” [Georgiy then goes on to explain a bunch of other stuff about the plague, which as far as I’m concerned isn’t all that useful to the task at hand.]

I find this so interesting because The Bachelor, in his own head, poses a question to himself, gets it wrong, and then has another separate figment of his imagination correct him, and then proceeds to tell The Bachelor that he’s not great at history and should listen to Georgiy more. What’s even more interesting is that, as far as I can tell, Georgiy and Daniil are both wrong, it was actually Themistocles that said “Strike, if you will, but hear,” and it was Pericles that died of plague. I found this interesting enough to look into who Themistocles and Pericles were, and here’s what I found:

Themistocles was a politician and general that broke the mold by being non-aristocratic and populist, which gave him the support of the people but put him at odds with the nobles and some of his peers. He turned 30 in 494 BC, which qualified him to run for the position of Archon, which he did, and won the position the following year. He had a prominent rivalry with another politician named Aristides. Whereas Themistocles was populist, Aristides primarily fought for the upper class. Themistocles eventually 20the rivalry after Aristides was exiled. Years later, though, Themistocles himself was exiled, and while he was gone his enemies took the opportunity to charge him with treasonous activities, knowing he could not defend himself. Because of this, Themistocles could never return to Athens, and so found employment and a home among the people that he once fought against while serving Athens. Given military command once more, he was actually Themistocles who said “Strike, if you will, but hear,” and it was Pericles who died of plague. I found this interesting enough to look into who Themistocles and Pericles were, and here’s what I found: Pericles, to me, has less interesting things about him in relation to Pathologic, with the main two being that he rehabilitated the image of Themistocles and he died of a plague. What could be interesting is the fact that General Block and Captain Longin are in both Pathologic 1 and 2 often compared to Achilles and Patroclus, two Greek soldiers from ancient folktales, primarily known for being two of the most important characters in The Iliad. To me, drawing a connection between Achilles and Block, as well as Pericles and Longin, isn’t that absurd. What could also be interesting to note is that Pericles was the main character in a play written in part by William Shakespeare. While Themistocles' life almost exactly fits the character arc of General Block, down to the weird connection between him dying of the plague in The Marble Nest and Themistocles drinking bull blood (as well as Dankovsky thinking Themistocles died of the plague), I think how Pericles fits in could lie in the Shakespearean play, as we all know how important theater is to Pathologic. You see by now at least partially what I think this alludes to, but I’ll talk more about it in the additional notes section.

Next, I’ll discuss a mythical story brought up in the Marble Nest: The Tower of Babel. This is brought up by the clerks sitting directly outside Georgiy Kain’s house. I think most people would talk to these guys right before talking to Georgiy, but I have more to say about it so it’s written second. When talking to one of the clerks during their argument about the plague, one man mentions that he thinks The Polyhedron is at fault, and no matter how Dankovsky replies (he has 3 options), the man then says “History already knows an example of people trying to erect an impossible tower. It ended in tragedy.” I could go on explaining why I believe this guy is talking specifically about the Tower of Babel, this post is already long enough so just trust my reasoning here, please. Notable to the point I’m trying to make, one of the other clerks brings up that he thinks the plague was started because of the irreconcilable differences between The Kin and the town, and the fact that the Kin have been forcibly mashed into the town. When Dankovsky asks the man if something is holding the Kin in the town, preventing them from leaving and returning to the earth, the man says “Someone is… our rulers. They have embedded the steppe people into this town, carved them into its warm flesh. This isn't a town, it's an honest-to-God minotaur. A chimera. And chimeras have remarkably short lifespans and bad health. Can you breed a snake and a crane? You can, yes. But the progeny won't live long.” This dialogue is interesting for a few reasons, one related to the tower of Babel and two related to other possible ARG clues. The first interesting thing is that what he’s describing, drawing a connection between the Tower of Babel and the Polyhedron, actually makes a lot of sense. To him, the Polyhedron is not only an affront to God, but its accentuation of human hubris coincides with a beating down of nature and the earth, represented in part by most of the Polyhedron’s mass being concentrated far above the earth while also piercing the earth’s heart. The story of the mythical tower, to oversimplify it, is essentially a tale of people from many different walks of life all coming together to construct a giant, seemingly impossibly tall tower in order to avoid the possibility of a second biblical flood destroying most of humanity. God sees this attempt as an affront to both him and the natural order, and so before the men are able to finish the tower he divides them all by making them speak different languages, making it impossible for them to understand each other. So, in this second clerk’s interpretation, the plague is a result of the town both rebelling against/abusing nature and also taking the Kin into itself. Unlike the first man, who believes the tower itself is at fault, this second one believes it’s all because of the town making itself into a “chimera,” which he believes cannot live long. What’s clear to me, though, is that although these men believe they disagree, their explanations complement each other very well, which brings us to our third man, who has a rather simple but somewhat confusing explanation. This clerk believes that this plague occurred in the town because men should not be “remodeled or altered,” and when asked what that has to do with the epidemic he replies “I don’t know… It wasn't we who designed the world like this. I believe in men, Doctor; in superhumans, I do not. This earthly life wouldn't fit them. Immortals have no place in the world of the living. This is just how it works. Take from it what you will.” This man seems to be implying that Simon Kain, the immortal man, is the reason why this plague appeared in the town. This is when it all started to come together for me: these men's stories do really all complement each other, because here they are posing the Polyhedron, chimera, and Simon as all the same. This will further be explained in the additional notes section. Three parts of one whole if you will.

Now, the mention of the Tower of Babel is interesting for two other reasons, one of which will be discussed in the additional notes section and one of which I’ll discuss here. In the Fyodor Vitin “One can work here” post there are numerous items displayed in the room pictured, but perhaps most interesting to me is the golden bull statue that sits at the front and center of the photo. My first thought when seeing that image was “Oh! This reminds me of the biblical story of the golden calf statue, which I bet is what they’re referencing.” For those who aren’t familiar, I’ll be oversimplifying another biblical story now. While trekking from Egypt to the holy land, Moses leaves his people behind to climb to the top of a mountain and commune with God. Moses is gone for forty days, upon which the people are fearful that he will not return, and so they molded a calf statue out of gold to worship. God, upon seeing this, sends Moses down to the base of the mountain to punish his people for their sins. Moses burns the golden calf in a fire, ground it to powder and water, and forced his people to drink it. He then killed all of them basically. My thought process was related to the fact that The Bachelor is punished severely by The Powers That Be for his own affront to God, the pursuit of immortality. Now, after that previous discussion about the Tower of Babel, I am noticing some very interesting things in this picture, and primarily that there are two other related statues. Now that we have the previous context about The Tower of Babel and the clerks in our mind, we can see new meaning in these statues: a black statue of a centaur, and a white bust of a man. The interesting thing about the centaur should be obvious, it is another chimera. The bust of the man, which seems to be made of marble, reminded me somewhat of ancient Greek statues that are chiseled to glorify certain leaders and make them seem somewhat perfect while also immortalizing them in stone. You can probably see the connection I’m making here, and so I will leave the rest of the explanation for the additional notes section.

Another thing that's interesting to note is the aforementioned three men, unlike most characters in Pathologic 2 and the Marble Nest, do not stop moving when you pause the game; their animations continue to play even after you bring up the pause menu. If you’re unaware, there is actually a small detail in Pathologic 2 where pretty much everything nature-based or that is a natural force of the world, as well as everything that’s supposed to be seen in a meta-narrative sense, does not stop moving when you pause the game. This includes rain, leaves falling, the particle effects that come off the clocks, fire, executors (not orderlies), plague particles, etc. Once I noticed this (while trying to get a screenshot of some things to analyze) I tested out some other NPCs in The Marble Nest, and all of the other people I tested seemed to freeze when the game was paused. However, this is not to say that no other characters in the Marble Nest move when the game is paused. I only tested about 4 guys besides the primary trio we're discussing, mostly just to make sure it's not a thing that all Marble Nest characters do. If one of you people reading this would like to go through and see which characters in The Marble Nest also possess this trait, it could prove fascinating.

Finally, I’ll talk about two somewhat modern (at least modern compared to the previous two) stories that are brought up in The Marble Nest, although not directly: The Time Machine by H.G. Wells and The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe. Admittedly, I have not read either of these stories (it’s possible I read the EAP story 5-6 years ago and just don’t remember it), but I do actually know quite a bit about the stories and their themes from a couple of literary studies on specific genres I’ve done over the years. Additionally, for this section, I have done some more research on the plots and themes of these stories which yielded fascinating results.

The Time Machine is brought up when The Bachelor visits The Cathedral and speaks to a Tragedian standing within. The Tragedian talks about how the building is not a temple, but a machine. Daniil asks what kind of machine, and The Tragedian responds “This is a time machine. Time works differently on the inside and on the outside. It's frozen now. I think something's broken.” To which Dankovsky can say “A time machine? Are you saying it can transport me to the past or to the future? Like in that Englishman's book, what's his name…” For this, I did some research into what book he could be referring to, and almost instantly Time Machine stood out to me for a number of reasons. I think there might be something interesting to be said about how this relates to the ARG, but I’m not going to be the one to say it, because I’m honestly not sure how or if it does. I will describe how it connects to Pathologic though, in case that sparks anyones mind. The work is apparently seen as popularizing the idea of time travel and the time machine, which relates to what IPL has said about The Bachelor’s route I suppose. As for the plot, it’s about a Victorian man using a time machine to travel to the year of A.D. 802,701. He meets two races of people, one descended from the oppressed working class and one descended from the pampered owning class. Over hundreds of thousands of years of this lifestyle, the two races have started to diverge, with the owning class becoming child-like and basically useless, while the working class has been forced into a life of toil and hardship which has shaped them into a race of underground-dwelling animalistic race of people. Essentially the novel is a depiction of class struggle and the class contradictions inherent within capitalism, but with a bit of a metaphorical twist. The toiling of the working class underground is what allows the upper class to live in abundance without the need for work. There is very interesting commentary here to be made on the worms/odonghs in the game, as well as the eternal youth that is present in some elements of the stone yard, but this isn’t a Pathologic essay, it’s a Pathologic ARG essay.

The Masque of the Red Death is alluded to by The Bachelor in a dialogue with a wandering citizen, who opens up the conversation by saying “A masquerade ball will be held in the main square this evening. People want to celebrate our victory over the sand pest. You don't mind…?” To which The Bachelor has 3 possible replies, one of them being “I seem to vaguely remember a rather famous story about a masquerade held to celebrate a victory over a plague. Remember how it ended?” To summarize, The Masque of the Red Death is about a group of noblemen taking refuge in an abbey to hide from a plague (the plague is known as the Red Death). The plague’s symptoms are gruesome, and all people who contract it apparently die within a half hour. The main character, Prince Prospero, and his fellow noblemen believe themselves to be entirely safe, though, as they have welded shut all the doors and isolated themselves in the abbey. To entertain the guests, the prince holds a masquerade ball that takes place in seven of the rooms of his abbey, each colored differently. The first six rooms are blue, purple, green, orange, white, and violet, with the last being black and illuminated by a red window. No guests venture into the seventh room, as they are all scared to enter it. Every hour a clock in that room chimes, upon which the guests freeze and go silent momentarily, before resuming normal activity once the chiming stops, only to do the same thing after an hour. Once midnight comes, a person appears in robes covered in blood and resembling a funeral shroud, wearing a mask that depicts a person clearly infected with the Red Death. This figure walks through six of the chambers before the prince starts chasing them with a dagger. Confronting them in the seventh room, the prince immediately falls dead upon seeing this person’s face. The other party-goers all charge the figure, stripping them of their clothes and mask, only to find that there is no one underneath. The conclusion of the story states that the figure was not a person, but rather an embodiment of the Red Death. The Red Death also appears as a reference in the novel The Phantom of the Opera, as well as several film and musical adaptations. The titular phantom dresses up as The Red Death, and in many adaptations wears a skull mask as part of the costume.

I believe Hamlet is also brought up at some point in The Marble Nest, but I can’t seem to find the dialogue so I’m unsure if that’s true.

Next, I'll talk about another random Marble Nest clue

The Bachelor’s hover text for the beetle item says “I used to collect these as a kid. Left the collection with my father.” @pseudoquiddity found that a paper on the top of “The Beginning” Fyodor Vitin post spells out Mechnikov, which is almost definitely referencing Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov, who was a Russian zoologist and immunologist who achieved incredible scientific discovery during his life, and notably for us he was largely focused on the issue of aging and extending human life. Mechnikov was actually brought up in an IPL teletype post as one of the Bachelor’s main influences scientifically, alongside Albert Einstein and Max Planck. The relevant thing about Mechnikov here is that, as a zoologist, he did many notable studies on insects throughout his career to see how their bodies reacted to things compared to how ours did. One thing that’s interesting to me is that the type of beetles we see in the game, I believe, are based on Trypocopris Vernalis, commonly known as the spring dumbledor or spring dor beetle, which is not known to inhibit the region that the Town on Gorkhon would reside in. Another thing I find interesting is the touch text from the Alpha version of the game, which reads “Some fifteen years ago, the Soul-and-a-Halves, the gang of children who are defined by sharing special bonds with their pets, actually considered to allow flower chafers as their "Halves" due to the beetles ‘looking as though they knew something’. The idea was quickly abandoned as ridiculous.” Maybe I’m just 8.6 thousand words into this post and have finally gone insane, but I think the beetles “looking as though they know something”, combined with their close connection to Dankovsky, it seems too intentional.

In the “Feverish Feelings” ARG, the Beatles (the band) were brought up indirectly and used by the players as a clue to get more information. This also related to the clue relating to the Gospel according to John. Additionally, speaking of Mechnikov, u/Fantastic_Advice5593 theorized that the numbers on Daniil’s train ticket from one of the original ARG notes could be hinting toward the date May 15th, or 5/15 (15/5 if you use the non-American dating system I believe), which is Mechnikov Day, and is commonly recognized as Mechnikov’s date of birth. Proving this connection further, the “Messages” Fyodor Vitin post was posted on May 15th. Another interesting thing is that if we convert the time that the “Messages” image was posted to the time scheme used in Pathologic (that is, a 24-hour clock), it comes out to 19:35 (Using GMT+3 time zone, as that’s where Moscow is located.) This is interesting because “Messages” was also posted 19 days after the previous post, and I know for a fact that 19 is an important number in this ARG: The newspaper from the “The Accident” post was labeled as issue number 19, the bible passage that we saw referenced in the anagram from the “Messages” post is John 19:19, the jumble of letters that we found in the touch text for the unused lantern item includes “19,” and so does the 196-17-1 number from Messages. In a way, the number 19 is sort of a self-checking method to substantiate some of the clues we’ve found thus far.

Griffins’ Tower

Many of the details in this section wouldn’t be possible without @kurury-chan who, upon my inquiry about the tower and its accompanying pharmacy, actually visited it, got tons of cool pictures, and translated a ton of the history for me! I literally cannot thank her enough for her help with many elements of this post, but especially in this section. In the original Pathologic ARG, “Feverish Feelings,” the Griffins’ Tower is brought up a couple of times throughout, and was part of an intensive fandom discussion because many elements of it paralleled many themes and plot points of Pathologic. The following connections/possibly related facts are a combination of fandom discussion from the time and my own research:

The tower is connected to a pharmacy that has existed since the 18th century. Both were once owned by the Poehl family, who were a rather eccentric yet somewhat mysterious rich family. Rumors from the time (The 18th/19th century) speculate that members of the family engaged in “…alchemy and witchcraft, and in the basements of the house he turned mercury into gold and bred griffins. Since ancient times, it was believed that griffins, mythical creatures with the body of a lion and the head of an eagle, were the guardians to secret sacred knowledge and treasures.”

In 1994, the artist Alexey Kostroma, together with the society "Here and There" (Tut i tam), organized a demonstration/art-piece to advocate for the preservation of the tower and the revitalization of the city, which they believed was falling apart before their very eyes. During this demonstration, they hoisted a large egg (approximately 1.5 meters) onto the top of the tower, and they painted (I’m not sure what was used to put the numbers on the tower, but I assume it was paint) numbers on almost every brick of the tower. While the purposes for the those two additions rarely get brought up in conversations surrounding it, the egg and the numbers are now some of the most well-known parts of the tower, despite the fact that neither of the two are there anymore. The Polyhedron, as we know, is a tower that at the top houses children and is made from its own complex blueprints. Additionally, in the Marble Nest, but also throughout Pathologic as a whole, there is a common piece of imagery that connects eggs and the Utopians. In the opening of The Marble Nest, the item that’s used on the loading screen is an egg. If you look at the egg sprite in P2, you’ll see a crack in it that heavily resembles the Polyhedron. Daniil Dankovsky commonly uses the Latin phrase “ab ovo,” which means “from the beginning” but when literally translated means “from the egg,” and his touch text for the egg in Marble Nest reads “To understand anything, start ab ovo — ‘from the egg.’”

While playing through The Marble Nest several times for this ARG, I noticed something that gave me more confidence in The Griffins’ Tower playing a role in it. If you guys have played Pathologic as much as I have you’ll know there’s a tower in between the Stone Yard and the steppe that you can’t enter and is barely ever really explained. If I’m picking apart my brain correctly for Pathologic 1 knowledge, I believe it is implied to be a Focus of some sort. If you’ve only played Pathologic 2, or you haven’t played through The Bachelor’s route in P1 enough, or you haven’t read through the Pathologic “Corpus” entries, you probably have an incomplete idea of what a “focus” is and all that it entails. I won’t go too deep into it now, but it’s said in one of the Corpus entries that, on top of the Polyhedron, Cathedral, Stillwater, Crucible, etc., there were a number of experimental Focuses that were built for Simon Kain to test the limits of what buildings could capture the human soul and memories. It’s a building you can’t ever enter, but it does have a visible door, which is very similar to the way that Simon’s focus is described by Victor Kain. I’d like to draw your attention to the visual similarities between that tower and the Griffin Tower. I’d also like to draw your attention to the fact that, in the original design concepts of Pathologic 1 every character is associated with a specific animal, and Simon Kain’s is a griffin. What is a griffin? Well, it’s a fusion between two drastically different creatures, a lion and an eagle; a griffin is a chimera.

Interestingly, in 2005 (the year Pathologic came out) the pharmacy connected to The Griffins Tower was closed for a while because it became flooded with water while trying to extinguish a fire.

There is a photo in the pharmacy connected to the tower (which has now been converted into a museum about the history of the place and pharmacies in general) that depicts, during the early 1900s, the pharmacy sitting next to a theater called “Simpatiya” (Sympathy).

While @kurury-chan was on a tour of the pharmacy/museum she found an interesting marmite that was on display. It was created by Samuel Clarke and it’s called “Pyramid,” and the marmite has an accompanying poem: Когда ночи темные, подумайте о Кларке, который попал точ��о в цель. Его ночные огни создают светлые ночи, в которых вы прекрасно видите. (When the nights are dark, think of Clark hitting the mark. His night lights create bright nights in which you can see perfectly) This is interesting largely because the poem reminds me somewhat of the body text for the lantern ad found in the newspaper post.

In the original email mentioning the Griffin’s Tower, Voronika Kroy appends the message by saying “P.S. I feel like I’ll need this memory later.”

Seventh Seal

I watched this movie after discovering all of the allusions to General Block we’ve seen thus far, but being unsure what to do with any of them. For those that don’t know, the movie The Seventh Seal’s protagonist Octavius Block has been listed as one of the main inspirations for Alexander Block, and since IPL seems intent on leading us to analyze certain works of literature/film/theater for this, I decided to look into it. What I found is incredibly interesting I think, because it seems that one of the main inspirations for The Marble Nest is The Seventh Seal.

The title is based on a bible verse (from the Book of Revelations) that reads “And when the Lamb had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.” This verse appears both at the very beginning of the movie and then again toward the end. This thirty minutes/half-an-hour element appears prominently in both this story and The Masque of the Red Death. One other place it appears is on the pocket watch in the first Fyodor Vitin post, where the time on it is 2:30. I am very confident that it also appears in The Marble Nest once or twice, but despite looking I was unable to find it. If anyone else knows where it might be, either comment on this post or message me, and I will put it in this section and credit you.

The movie's plot revolves around Antonius Block, a disillusioned medieval knight returning from the Crusades. Block is struggling throughout the movie with his inability to believe in God and his realization that his whole life has been wasted. He wishes more than anything to do one last deed before his death to give his life meaning. The movie is set during the Black Death, with prominent elements of the story revolving around the plague. The movie largely focuses on how Block takes in several poor and out-of-luck folks fleeing the plague, inviting them to stay at his castle and escorting them along the way.

Toward the beginning of the movie, Death comes to take Block, but he convinces Death to play him in a game of chess for his life. This game of chess continues throughout the movie, with Death allowing Block to take several breaks in order to find clarity about his life and death. Toward the end of the movie, he allows Death to take his queen, effectively ensuring he would lose the game in the next turn, so that his companions could get away without Death noticing. After returning to his castle, everyone has a nice meal before Death arrives and takes everyone, excluding the people that Block helped get away by tricking Death.

Many things from Pathologic seem to take inspiration from this movie; most notable being the storyline of The Marble Nest (Dankovsky’s “People” screen categorizes people as chess pieces, essentially implying that his struggle against death is a sort of chess match), but there are also some smaller things. For example, there is a scene where the characters encounter someone afflicted with the plague who cries out for help, and one of the women tries to get closer to give the man water, but another person stops her, as giving water to a plague victim is futile and dangerous; almost immediately after this, a personification of Death appears. This heavily reminds me of the intro/tutorial of Pathologic 2, where a similar scene occurs.

While watching the movie, it’s very easy to see how Block was directly inspired by the main character, but it’s hard to convey exactly how without describing many scenes in detail, so I will simply describe one of them. After leaving a church confessional where he admits to his faith faltering and wanting to perform one meaningful deed before he dies, Block encounters a young woman who’s about to be burned at the stake for allegedly having ties to the devil. He takes pity on this woman, seeing something special in her, and believes she can tell him about life after death. This, to me, seems very reminiscent of Block’s storyline with the Changeling in P1.

Another small lead before this part of the post is finished: This lead, I will admit, I stumbled across completely at random, and will not talk about much because there’s not much I can say about it that isn’t obvious. It might be worth looking into the Russian philosopher Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov, and perhaps thinking about if Fyodor Vitin was based partially on him, since we know Vitin works closely with Daniil.

Additional Notes/Comments:

In the newspaper clipping, it is said that a man with the initials “F.L.” had been one of the apparent two victims of the fire that burned down several buildings. This man (who I’ll simply refer to as “F” from now on) is an academician, historian, and writer of everyday life, which obviously fits well with the man that we know as Fyodor Vitin, and it has been assumed up until this point that he was the victim of this fire. I think there are three possibilities here: Fyodor Vitin was not the victim of this fire somehow, Fyodor Vitin is not his real name, or the newspaper is lying to us. In connection to the light/lantern emphasis in the newspaper, it might be worth it to note that the word “vitin” in Faroese means something like “the lighthouse”/“the beacon”, while in old Swedish it means something like “to know.” What’s more interesting is that Vitin in old Swedish is a second-person plural present indicative, and for people that got a useful education, that means it’s a verb that’s used to factually describe the current actions of the people that the speaker is saying it to. If Vitin isn’t his real surname, his username could mean “Fyodor beacon”, or “Fyodor (that you all) know”.

As discussed extensively in the section on the Tower of Babel, there is a direct connection drawn between the Polyhedron, Simon, and chimeras. We elaborated a bit on this connection in the section on the Griffins’ Tower. What’s especially interesting then is the fact that, in The Marble Nest, the Polyhedron is labeled as “focus,” implying that Simon’s essence is infused in the Polyhedron, as is what happens in the first game. This, I believe, confirms our theory about the connection even further. What then makes this even more related to the ARG is the fact that in the “One can work here” post by Fyodor Vitin, we see the three statues depicting the golden bull, the centaur, and the marble bust of a man. It is then worth noting that this bust of a man made of marble could be a reference to The Marble Nest, perhaps trying to get us to look there for clues. I believe, if the golden bull is meant to represent the Polyhedron (or at least the Polyhedron argument in The Marble Nest), and the centaur is meant to represent the chimera, then the marble bust of the man is meant to represent Simon (or, once again, represent the Simon/immortal man argument from the Marble Nest). This is supported by my point about the marble busts both immortalizing men and also making them more into concepts than men (as the statue can only depict a small part of a man’s life, usually depicting him in battle, leading a governmental position, etc). In the original game, and as can slightly be seen in hints of the second game, Simon is sometimes seen as more of a concept than a man; he is the ideology of the utopians incarnate, the perfect man that represents everything humanity could be. As a chimera is vital to Burakh’s quest, so too is it vital for Dankovsky’s (and it’s interesting to note that Burakh has the chimera revelation while in conversation with Dankovsky.) If the Marble Nest is used to represent the stone yard, or the “town” in its purest form, then Simon Kain is the marble man. It then becomes important to figure out where the “One can work here” picture is supposed to be depicting. I believe, if the statues there are supposed to represent all that we’ve said so far, the location should be representative of Dankovsky’s fight against death, and therefore I say it probably has to be Thanatica.

Now, as for all the connections with General Block, there are obviously many of them, from the Guglielmo Pepe hypothesis to the mention of Aristides/Pericles to The Seventh Seal to the whole “ash” thing, it seems far too much to be a series of coincidences. I don’t think it’s too crazy to connect the prominent appearance of the number 30 in the Block/Pepe/Aristides context to the prominent appearance of the number 30 (as in half an hour) in The Seventh Seal, which makes the appearance of the number 30 in that first Fyodor Vitin post even more interesting. It’s long been theorized that, from what we see in the Haruspex’s route and what we’ve seen in Pathologic 1, the Bachelor’s new route will probably feature General Block much more prominently. Perhaps, as the first ARG was so focused on the inquisitors, we’ll also get to learn more about the army in this one. Maybe General Ashes even had something to do with the building that was reduced to ashes?

The topic of religion, and specifically Christianity, comes up a lot in The Marble Nest. I think all the connections I’ve made in this post to Christianity have convinced you that it’s seemingly an important part of this ARG. In the first ARG, there were certain biblical passages that acted as clues, specifically from the Gospel according to John, which we talked about in the section on the “Messages” post. As is also mentioned in that section, the connection to Inquisitors Peter Kroy and Mark Karminsky seems to be driving us toward looking into The Gospel according to Peter and The Gospel according to Mark. It’s also talked about in that section how these both relate to Daniil. Mark Karminsky specifically also seems to have had something to do with the "Accident" mentioned in the newspaper, and so perhaps combining numbers from the newspaper within the Gospel of Mark could lead to some clues.

Still, as much as I’ve said in this post, there is more I wish to analyze but have not yet. This post has been in the works for a while, though, and I don’t want people to be waiting any longer, so I’ll have to save that other stuff for another day.

If anyone can somehow get into the game files of the Marble Nest and retrieve the texture/model for any of the letters or books (like the two linked images), that will end up being very helpful.

Other screenshots from Pathologic 2/The Marble Nest that could be of interest:

Grigory Gorky (Pathologic 2) Grigory Gorky (The Marble Nest) Mikhail Goba (The Marble Nest) Daniil Death Certificate (The Marble Nest) Rug (The Marble Nest) Book (The Marble Nest) Familiar Bloody Handprint (The Marble Nest) Tipped Over Lantern (The Marble Nest) Staff Sergeant Plover (The Marble Nest) Avrely Gubar (The Marble Nest) Odd use of Roman Numerals (The Marble Nest) Cathedral Letter (The Marble Nest) Plant that I found several times in the Cathedral (The Marble Nest)

#pathologic #pathologic 2 #pathologic arg #daniil dankovsky #мор утопия #Bachelor ARG

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skylarstark4826 · 1 month ago

Text

“I’m only doing this because Nathaniel asked me to play nice and it’s his birthday,” Chloe huffed, shoving a jacket at Marc. “Put this on.”

He eyed the black leather apprehensively. “Oh, uh, I don’t know if I can pull this off.”

“Normally you couldn’t but that’s why I’m here,” she sighed. “Take off your pants.”

“What?! No!”

“Believe me when I say I genuinely don’t care what’s in your tighty whities but you need to put these on.” She turned away to grab a pair of red skinny jeans and held them back without looking at him. “Get to it; I don’t have all day.”

He tentatively took the pants and kept a wary eye on her back as he dressed. “Thank you for doing this,” he said quietly as he buttoned the pants. “I know you don’t like me very much.”

She turned around to face him and crossed her arms. “Whoever said I don’t like you?”

He blinked up in surprise, hands still on the button fly. “You have, multiple times.”

Chloe frowned. “Yeah, well, I say that to a lot of people. Don’t take it personally.” She sighed and let her head fall back with a groan. “Fine, maybe I didn’t like you but you don’t bother me now so there.”

“What changed?”

She rolled her eyes and looked away. “I did, I guess. Look, don’t make a thing of it. We’re in love with the same dumbass guy and I guess I just got tired of being mad all the time. It’s not worth it.”

“Sorry,” Marc winced. Their relationship was rocky at best, this being the most time they’d ever spent together without him wanting to run away in tears. It’d been hard to be with Nathaniel who was also with Chloe but after trying to deny his feelings for so long, it felt better to love and be loved, no matter how odd the relationship felt.

She moved closer to him and began to mess with his hair, carefully not meeting his eyes as she did. “You don’t have anything to apologize for. You’re as hopeless as I am.”

“He’s pretty great.”

“He’s all right,” she argued but shot him a quick wink before returning her attention to his hair. “So are you married to this weird clump that sticks up in the back or what?”

“Not really.” He felt his cheeks warm. “My hair is actually kinda curly and I straighten in but that part does what it wants so I just leaned into it.”

“Wait, you have naturally curly hair and you’ve been straightening it into this anime atrocity all this time?”

“Yeah.”

She stepped back and threw her hands up. “Get undressed. You’re getting in the shower and washing your hair and we’re starting completely over.”

“But--”

“Did I stutter, Anciel? Now!”

___________________________

“This is a nice surprise.” Nathaniel looked between his equally primped partners and his mouth spread into a wide smile. “I wasn’t expecting to get both of you for my birthday dinner.”

Chloe and Marc exchanged a look. “Well, we actually had a nice time today so I decide to tag along.” She narrowed her eyes at her boyfriend. “And get that smug grin off your face. I know that was your plan this whole time. I’m not stupid.”

Marc blinked but kept his mouth shut. He caught Nathaniel’s mischievous look and realized he’d fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.

“Don’t worry; you were the bait,” Nathaniel whispered as he hugged him. He kissed his cheek and pulled back. “And look at this hair.” He carefully tugged on one of the curls and Chloe reached out to smack his hand away.

“Don’t mess with my masterpiece. Marc likes it like this, don’t you?”

“It was a lot easier,” Marc admitted. “It might take a while to get used to though.”

“You look more handsome than you ever have so I don’t want to hear it.” Chloe easily slid her arm through his and offered her other to Nathaniel.

Nathaniel raised his eyebrows and she stuck out her tongue.

“Your time of always getting to be in the middle is over, Red. Welcome to the new regime.”

Nathaniel glanced at Marc who smiled despite his deep blush. He linked their arms and the trio set off. “Long live the queen,” he quipped.

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honeygem · 2 years ago

Text

「U n t i t l e d - Fatui Harbingers x reader 」 part 4

you've worked on the underground district ever since your mother passing. Not knowing who your father was, you didn't have anyone to support you but yourself.

You took the same job your mother did, save a part of the money you earned for emergencies, and only payed for your necessities.

Danger has already been part of your life ever since you were born. Life could've been more meaningless but you lived out of spite. You wanted to beat the hell out of your bastard father and ask for all his wealth as a compensation for his unpayed child support and your mother's passing.

However none of that mattered since a new door opened right in front of you dangling a tempting offer, you just couldn't resist.

content warning : grammatical errors and typos, deep throat, oral fixation, fellatio, kissing, nsfw, name calling from the Harbingers,

Note: maybe y/n's a bit of a slut sometimes. Here's the long awaited part 4 featuring childe! Next i think we'll have dottore. I'll have to check the poll just in case ahaha

part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4

◇ I have a (ded) twt acc if u guys wanna see updates and other stuff i don't post here: @/Hon3yJ4R

The Harbinger plagued y/n's mind every night.

It wasn't her first and surely wouldn't be the last. She had met countless men who approached her with similar intentions. A gift in their hand and a good guy feat displayed just for her, hoping for a night with her or perhaps claiming her entirely. It was part of her work but it never got her to indulge her worldly desires.

But he was different. His demeanour was far from those she had met; she knew at first glance she didn't have the chance to win or break loose. It didn't feel like he was the one who wanted her rather it made her feel like she needed him to satiate her lust. Compared to all the men she had met, he gave an ominous aura even with his gentle facade. A dangerous trail to tread and yet it felt so electrifying and sparked synapses in her brain that itched her brain to find out and if he were to take her at that moment, he would've.

Y/n had washed her face to freshen up, and tried to forget about what happened. She went to the kitchen and looked for something to eat. Upon opening the fridge, right in front of her were the donuts given by the Harbinger and one of the donuts being half eaten. Now it makes it even harder to forget about it.

It took her one night contemplating whether to eat it or not, assuming it was filled with poison or some kind of substance. Many have done that and with the kind of person the Harbinger presented himself she had the right to doubt his offering for the sake of her safety. In the end, temptation had taken over and had her taken a bite.

She expected to at least drop dead like snow white and only to be awakened with a true love's kiss, perhaps like how the Harbinger had kissed her. True to herself, the Harbinger's demeanour wasn't the only thing that kept her awake at night. She figured the Harbinger wasn’t that lowly to attempt cheap tricks like that, perhaps he would’ve done something much more but with the way y/n sees herself she didn’t think the trouble would’ve been worth it.

The donut tasted less than what she had expected. It was as if it already lost its flavour because she had left it in the fridge for a night before falling into temptation. Cold donuts turned out palatable but nothing too bad. Nevertheless, the donut never had the suspected substances in the first place. In the end, she figured eating donuts and hot chocolate in the morning could at least lessen her expenses. Plus, finishing it and throwing the trash might help forget everything sooner.

As y/n eats her breakfast while watching the local news, there was a knock on the door. She wasn’t expecting a visitor at all and yet someone had come to see her. A chill ran down her spine, anxious to answer the door, y/n lowered the volume from her television. A series of knocks was heard from her door repeatedly. Fast soft knocks weren't heard too clearly further from her door so she walked closer, careful not to make any noise or sign of presence.

Could the knocks be..... morse code?

There was only one person who could’ve done that but it wasn’t like it’s not possible for strangers to come by and do morse in hopes for y/n to deceive.

Listening closely to the series of knocks, she noted in her head:

A-X….. A-J-A-X

Ajax? What’s he doing here? I thought he went on a trip. He shouldn’t be back by this month…. How come he's here….? Why is he here?

“Милая*, open the door.” The voice called out. "Let me in, please. I've got a few stuff I bought and I thought you might like 'em."

Y/n opened her door halfway and peeked in and Ajax smiled at her sweetly, a bit awkward but sweet.

"I thought you won't come back until next month." Y/n said, looking at him confused and surprised. "And what's with all of this stuff? Don't tell me you're staying here again 'til your next expedition."

"You know me so well! Now let me in."

"No."

"And why not?"

"I'm busy." Y/n hoped it ends there. "And I haven't cleaned up…"

"... I'll help you clean up…!"

"... And I'm naked…"

"... Doesn't look like it... and you know well enough that'll never stopped me."

"...."

"Now, open. Please? Open the door for me, girly? Sweetcheeks? Darling? Come on, my hands going numb from carrying all this heavy stuff are you gonna let me in or not?—"

Y/n had closed the door, not letting Ajax finish, then the locks on the door clicked. Unsure what had happened, Ajax stood still holding his presents with his hand as they slowly turn numb.

"Are you coming in or not?"

Struggling to open the door with his hand occupied with heavy plastics, Ajax surely needed assistance. Moments passed and y/n couldn't take the ruckus he had been doing with her door, y/n opened the door halfway letting Ajax to just kick it open.

"I knew you couldn't take seeing me struggle."

"You were pissing me off."

Ajax went and dropped the plastics by the kitchen table and stoob behind y/n as she continued to eat her breakfast. He leaned down and wrapped his arms around her gently, trying not to restrict her too much from eating, and placed his head beside hers.

"You didn't miss me?"

She didn't respond.

"I missed you." He kissed her lower jaw then her check. "I even brought some stuff I thought you'd like. Got some food, heels, new clothes.... lingerie."

Ajax sighed as she still didn't look like she was paying attention, her eyes clearly glued to her phone as she ate. It seems like to him his words aren't even heard. He looked over to her phone screen and saw paragraphs after paragraphs of a document from her email and before he could analyse everything y/n had turned off her phone.

"So how much do I owe you?"

"Huh?" Ajax was still in the thought of the document, seeing her plate she had already finished. "Oh, it's nothing! Free of charge."

Y/n stood up and faced him, making Ajax release her from his embrace. Though still a couple of inches shorter, she stared him down and repeated her question.

"Odd enough for you to not charge me anything. Change of heart or you'd request something different?"

"Come on, girly. What do you take me for?"

She tried closed the distance between them as Ajax backed away leading him to clumsily sat down the couch.

"A weak man."

"That's a bit harsh. Didn't know you think of me that way." He gave an awkward smile as he watched y/n drop on her knees in between his legs. Her hands trailing his thighs as he puts his hand up unsure what to do next. "Y/n..... Милая."

"Yes?" Y/n continued and unbuckled his belt, slowly unbuttoning his pants and pulling down his zipper. "Use your words, Ajax. You know what you want."

"I—" He placed his hand on top of hers yet she was quick enough to pull out his flaccid cock. "Fuck- your hands are cold!"

She smirked then proceeded to slowly stroke his cock, her eyes looking directly to his troubled face. Not long after, she opened her mouth and licked the tip then sucked, earning a shaky moan from him. She circled her tongue around the tip then dragged it down to the base. She used her hands to continue to stroke his cock while the other played with his balls.

"Archons— fuck, y/n. I really-"

Unable to finish his sentence from the stimulation he's in, he struggled as he kept repeating the same words over and over, hoping she'd stop... even when he hated getting blue balls after.

"Please- y/n, I mean it. I mean it just please- stop— fuck!"

Y/n cut him off by surprise by taking all of his cock, the tip reaching her throat. Even when she's gagging from deepthroating, she couldn't help but to continue. She had placed both her hands on his knees to keep his legs open as his thighs were already twitching from the stimulation.

"A-ah! Y/n, please, stop. I can't— we can't," Ajax wanted to push her off but the moment he removes his hand covering his mouth to muffle his moans, it'll be over. He knew that if he couldn't keep his voice down, y/n wouldn't stop until he's spent. Although he might have already known y/n knew how much he's struggling to keep his voice down. "I really just— oh f...uck, i really just wanted to give you a gift! Free.... of cha-charge."

Y/n pulled away from his cock as Ajax had finally got to relax himself for a while. Her eyes looked at Ajax's as she pulled herself up and leaned in his face, leaving a little bit of distance between their lips.

"You mean it?" She asked, slyly snaking her hands back down his cock, holding it gently.

Ajax moaned from the touch and nodded then she dragged her up to his stomach to his neck and cupped his face.

"I'm sorry, Ajax." She gave him an apologetic smile, then gave a small kiss on his nose. "But you're so hard right now. I wouldn't want to leave you hanging after what I did."

"милая, don't worry about it. I'll be gone sooner or later. I could just—"

Y/n stopped him from talking by pressing her lips to his. The taste of donuts and coffee and himself welcomed Ajax as they made out.

As their lips steal each other’s breath, y/n started taking off her pyjamas leaving her with only her top.

"You don't wear any panties to sleep? Naughty girl."

"Take off your pants. Now."

She sat on top of him as soon as his pants were off, her pussy just below his aching cock. She grabbed his hands and placed them on her chest allowing him to grope her boobs as she grinds on his cock. Sweet moans escapes her lips as he grunts from pleasure.

Ajax took it upon himself to remove her remaining clothes leaving her naked on top of her.

"Fuck."

Ajax couldn't help but to laugh a bit, realizing he might've need to take back his word from not fucking her at this very moment.

"You make everything so difficult, милая, you know that?"

"Really? All I know is that you like it. You like this."

"Well I know for sure you're gonna like this."

Without warning, Ajax had already started fucking her. His cock slipped inside her so easily as her pussy had been wet from the start. He had grabbed a hold of her ass as he pulled her up and down his cock earning a series of moans from her.

* милая - honey, darling, sweetie

"Pantalone sure loves taking his sweet time with everything." Dottore complained.

"And you can't just walk around with blood and whatnot splattered around your clothes and expect people to leave you alone."

"It's past midnight, Pierro! And I clean up nicely." The Doctor yelled. "It's not like there's that many people walking around at night, they'd be better off asleep. Even if there were people, they could care less and be on their way."

"And you can't bother yourself to look nice for once?" Another voice joined in. "Apologies for being late, I had to take care of some matters."

"You're just in time, Regrator." The mask man, mentioned everyone to gather around, arms placed on each other's shoulder and all.

"No offence but we look like a bunch of idiots like this." Dottore muttered.

"Come on, don't be so negative! It's like planning a scheme like one of those kids from TV shows." Regrator beamed.

"You're right. This isn't working out." Pierro excused himself and stepped away from the circle, making everyone else follow.

"Zenith is still open, I assume. Let's head there." Pierro turned to his right, facing the masked man. "Would that be alright, Capitano?"

"I suppose that would've been better than a while ago." Capitano agreed. "I just wanted a reason to get close to you all, that's all."

Capitano's confession had him get a weird stare from Dottore, an amused reaction from Regrator, and Pierro could've been more stoic.

On their way to Zenith, it was proven true that there weren't many people around. Some didn't even bat an eye towards them, no matter how Dottore was boisterous enough to be heard for a few more blocks, and even more with Regrator arguing with him.

Pierro had opened the door for everyone to enter then entered last.

"What's with the dim lights?" Dottore called out of the blue. "Are you all about to close or something?"

"Good morning, gentlemen." A man from the counter greeted. "Excuse us for setting this type of environment. We're not usually expecting customers at this hour but you may use our backroom in the meantime."

"There's a backroom at Zenith?"

"Yes, sir."

"Ain't it enough to settle here?" Dottore pointed out.

"I made reservations just in case." Pierro answered. "Precautions."

"Right this way gentlemen."

"You know, until now, I'm still baffled how much time we've invested time for this whore." Dottore said with a hint of surprise in his voice. "How could one bitch like her be useful to any of us when we could just take one— or her, torture to confess, then just dump the bitch somewhere."

"That whore you were talking about has connections with the Ragnvindr." Regrator talked back. "We might as well as keep her as bait."

"Ragnvindr?— oh, OH... doesn't ring a bell."

"That kid who took down most of our strongholds. I believe he didn't even had his vision back then and he took on a suicide mission. Surely, he and Childe would get along. Possible but unlikely to end in good terms."

"And what's bait going to do us good if that Ragnvindr kid hasn't been showing up to Snezhnaya?"

"Well, if you used that big brain of yours, you could've also thought we'd know everything about that Ragnvindr kid."

"What information could you even get from a whore like her? How good he fucks her all night?"

"That's enough!" Capitano firmly said. "From the data gathered by Regrator, she's been living low-profile. If she had the chance to meet and get along with the Ragnvindr, then she's much more to use than anyone in Abythòs."

"She's had connections with the Ragnvindr for a while, I'm sure she knows something a lot more than what's happening in Mondstat. Perhaps even a whore like her could be of use to us." Regrator added.

"Which is?"

"I did a bit more digging. This person had an extremely low profile in Snezhnaya however I've found that outside, numerous people had come to know her. An incredible fighter and healer."

"Perhaps she was a factor to how that Ragnvindr kid managed to survive."

"Perhaps." Pierro replied. "Whatever and whoever she may be, we'll need a plan to take her to come with us."

◇ Tags(lemme kno if you wanna be tagged or not!!): @preciousukii @crazysimp101 @urmom0626

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