#the blob-lem

[lurkerdemon]

We Have a Blob-lem - Part 3

Part 1, Part 2

Danny & Jason are around. Then a Blob crashes the party.

Content Warnings(?): Mild swearing, and Guns

Word Count: 1547

“Wow, you suck at this.” 

Another beam of green energy flashes through the air at the can Danny launched across the training area of the cave. The laser clips a top corner and sends the object spiraling into a wall as Jason flips him off with his free hand.

“You. Shut. And I’m still hitting them!”

Danny simply floats over to throw again. The next can gets hit right on the bottom as it makes its spiralling arc through the air. The resulting concussive force from the Fenton brand weapon launches it upward as it collides with the stone ceiling far above with a resounding aluminum clang. Danny gives a low whistle.

“Overcompensated the aim. Cool party trick though.”

“Ass.”

“And that’s why we’re friends!”

The slug Jason aims at Danny’s arm has no real force to it, but that still doesn’t prevent him from going intangible just to watch the larger man take a moment to regain his balance at the lack of resistance. Jason glares and Danny chuckles.

“I told you it’s different when you use lasers!”

“Danny, I know how to use more weapons than you ever will, dead or half-alive.”

“And I was told how to hold a Fenton blaster when I was seven. Plus I can to do this-”

Danny waved one hand as green energy enveloped four cans and then chucked them across the room. All he needed was one jump-suited finger as an ecto-beam shot out and blasted each can to a partially melted mush. They hit the floor with a dull, metallic thud while Danny took a bow.

“And now you’re the showoff.”

“Coming from the guy who just bragged about knowing how to ‘use more weapons’ than a ghost. Maybe you could do with the reminder to stay humble.”

Jason turned around to spare himself from seeing more of Danny’s smirk as he made his way back to the nearby table.

“Oh yeah? Let’s see how your aim is with something that has more kick to it then.”

He stopped halfway, body stock-still and tense. Danny frowned and floated down to take a look for himself.

“What? Cat got yourrrrrrrrrr - Oh. Oh no.”

Sat at the table where Jason had left his holsters for his favorite pistols was a familiar green blob, the soccer ball sized creature giving low growls as cartoonish pointed teeth gnawed on the grip. It jerked backward occasionally, slowly making progress before one final pull got the weapon free and onto the table. It continued chewing.

Jason broke free of the shock and pointed.

“What is that?”

“Umm. Damian’s new pet? Let me just-” Danny floated sloooowly closer, “Vee. Hey Vee! Good blob. Stay right there.”

“V?”

Danny stopped as the blob’s attention turned. 

“Short for ‘Eviscerate.’” He said in a low voice.

“The hell kind of name is that?”

“Look, you try telling Dami what to name his pet. It took me an hour just to talk him into a name that we could come up with a nickname for. Not many options for ‘Destroyer of Worlds.’”

“... Dee?”

“There are three potential D’s at this place already, I am not adding a fourth and getting confused with a blob ghost!”

Danny winced at the louder than intended exclamation, turning to the now growling Vee who was starting to drag the gun backward along the table. He glared at Jason.

“Oh please. I’ll do it.”

“No wait!”

Jason strode forward, closing the gap in a few steps, to which Vee responded by enveloping the gun whole in it’s body. He scowled and approached even faster.

“Give!”

Too late. The blob darted away from them just as Danny moved to cut off its exit further into the cave.

“Vee! Vee drop it!” 

Vee darts left. Danny dips left. 

Vee darts right. Danny dips right. 

Jason began to creep up from behind while the blob’s little eyes showed more smugness than Danny thought possible. The standoff lasts several seconds while Vee shimmies in place. All three of them tense at the same time.

What neither expect is for Vee to glow, Danny sensing ectoplasm concentrating on the gun as the blob deflates by a third of its size. He has enough wherewithal to put up an ectoshield in front of Jason just in case, only for Vee to take on the tell-tale transparency of intangibility and run through him instead. Gun and all.

Both look on in horror as it heads straight up the staircase leading back to the manor.

“Okay so, didn't know they could do that.” Danny says with a dumbfounded look.

“Never would have guessed. You owe me a new gun if it messed up my favorite.”

“Hey! I'm already letting you use the Fenton one!”

“Excellent point. You're letting me keep the new gun if it messed up my favorite.”

Danny narrows his eyes while Jason just raises an eyebrow in an unspoken ‘what’ya gonna do about it.’

“Fine. Just help me catch it before someone gets home.”

- - - - -

Danny was learning a few things right now.

1) It is really annoying to try and find a small pet in a manor with a lot of places to hide.

2) It's even more difficult when said pet doesn't have to adhere to the laws of physics.

3) Blob ghosts, while one of the most harmless ecto-entities, can apparently extend these ghostly rule bending properties to things with enough ectoplasm. (If the now ecto-coated gun in Vee was anything to go off.)

Danny never did enjoy the “learning on the fly” part of ghost stuff, and these weren't an exception.

He called out just as he turned into the main foyer and spotted Jason returning from the left wing.

“I think I got close before seeing Vee go your way. Any signs of them or Alfred Cat-worth?”

“Nothing. Cat’s in Damien's room though. Shut the door for now.”

“Alright, one less thing to worry about.”

“I told you already, the safety for the gun is on – oh yee of little faith.”

“Look with my luck I'm just trying to prepare for the worst. Now I can still pick up Vee on my ghost sense but it's going to be difficult to get the exact position. So I think-”

BANG.

“...”

“... Don't. Say. Anything. I know for a fact the safety was on.”

“.... Anything.”

Jason bit back a groan. 

- - - -

“Eassssy Vee. Everything’s fine.”

Danny really should have made Jason be the distraction. Trying to not look at him creeping up behind Vee again was killing him.

Vee just gave another growl, sounding a lot like a dog saying ‘No’ as it sunk slightly lower onto the guest bed. The blob was a bit smaller again, maybe the size of a handbag, so definitely used up more ecto doing whatever caused the gunshot. Which was fine. Danny was sure the guest bedroom could have used some art hangings anyway. He definitely didn't feel a cold sweat run down his back every time he looked at the wall next to him by the dresser.

This is fine.

“Okay. Okay. I'll stay right here. See. Nice and-”

Jason lunged and grabbed the blob. Vee gave a betrayed howl in return as he forcibly got a hand on the pistol. He refused to let go even as his hand filled with a chill and a pins-and-needles static raced across his nerves.

“Hey! Be careful with them!”

“I. Almost. Got it.”

With one final tug the gun came loose. He immediately checked for the safety (still on! Hah!) and shoved it to the side while his other arm held the angry chaos ball. 

Danny gave a sigh of relief. “Safe.”

“Speak for yourself. I’m still checking the gun over later and then you get to explain the hole in the wall.”

“Hey!”

Jason just grinned. Vee meanwhile continued to wriggle in the hold pinching it to his chest, small dot eyes looking up at him.

Then it bit his arm.

He looked down at it, blinking as confusion turned into a weird wave of cool indifference. Then he frowned even as the blob expanded in size.

“The fuck?”

The irritation quickly slid along that same wave, right before it crashed against the beginnings of something green in his vision. He wasn't Pit Mad, but it was definitely stirring up enough to make him consider punting the thing for whatever it was doing.

Danny stepped in just before that became a serious consideration, pulling the now beach ball sized blob away. Jason felt the wave of whatever that was die back down.

“Bad blob! Bad! You don't know where he's been!”

“Hey!”

Vee was gagging in Danny's arms like it just ate a lemon. It growled and grumbled, ectoplasm glowing again.

POP.

Then Danny is suddenly holding four blobs. Vee in normal ectoplasm green, two a light ghostly blue that reminds him of Box Ghost, and a fourth a dark verdant green that is currently gnawing on one of his fingers.

This time it was Danny’s turn to groan. “Sure. What's one more surprise today.”

“Congratulations, it's a blob.” Jason sneered.

“Hey these are technically yours! Now either you take them, or you’re helping me get them out of here before Damien-”

The door creaked.

“Before I what?”

= = = = = =

1) I debated what name Damien would give the blobs for a long while, and then simply decided to go based on Wayne Family Adventures and say he chose violence (literally) because I thought it was funny.

So now introducing:

Vee (aka Eviscerate aka the one and only Bat-Blob)

May (Maim)

Mu (Murder)

and Kay (Kill)

Imagine with me:

Criminal: *be doing a crime*

Robin: *descends from the shadows and points*

Robin: Kill

Criminal: *Screaming as they get a face full of angry (but harmless) green*

2) I debated specifying whether or not Jason & Danny got armor or something for approaching a potentially live gun and decided to just stop debating and get this posted.

That being said I feel I should say the obvious and take care with firearms. Giving the blob a gun was for the funny.

3) I do have plans for more parts, I am just slow and easily distracted.

[blood-orange-juice]

We need to talk about Caterpillar.

This has been discussed when he was first leaked tbh but there have been Important Additions and also who's to stop me from writing yet another wall of text.

Our precious boy. I love him.

Arle's hands.

I'm disregarding the possibility that this is a red herring.

There's a theory that Caterpillar could in fact be Carter.

We know from 4.0 quests that Rene and Jakob tried to heal Carter through abyssal means and it backfired, turning him into something strange. It's unclear what exactly but from the horrified descriptions everyone assumed he became some sort of self-regenerating meatblob.

One possibility is that there was no blob. He just got turned into a hilichurl (descriptions just overexaggerated how bad it was) and later given consciousness.

Another possibility is that his consciousnes was transplanted into a body of a churl (Rene does write about transplanting consciousness and this version seems the most likely to me). Or maybe the blob itself was turned into a churl.

What if Arle was cut out from the same blob? Or another similarly created blob? What is she has the ethics of a meatblob?

Also there was a self-regenerating Ruin Grader in the Virgil quest, and iirc we know from the webcomic that humans can be turned into Ruin Guards (Dottore does it and he uses a similar method to create his clones) and maybe meatblobs can too. So maybe a lot of things we see in Fontaine are in fact Carter. LIke that famous colony of cancer cells that everyone uses for their experiments.

Alternative theory: Caterpilar is a dead god, given the form of a hilichurl. I think that's unlikely because his "past life" involved Mary-Ann somehow and seems like they were close.

Another alernative theory: he is both. They tried to heal Carter using pieces of a dead god from the Abyss. How nice.

(but then Dottore kiiind of did the same with Collei and the result was different. but also Rene did the same with Jakob and the result was also different. maybe it depends on the god and the person being treated)

Also if Caterpillar is going to turn into a butterfly then so will Arle. She'll make a beautiful butterfly, don't you think?

Thank you for coming to my ted talk. Genshin lore is insane.

[proustiansleep]

"The means by which we get outside our prejudicial intuitions about how the world works may also be the means by which we undermine the ecological substrate of the world, and vice versa.  What else do we know? What else are we good for? If as in Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris, the surface of the planet’s ocean was sentient, the planet Earth’s strategy toward sentience includes layered networks of neurons in the folded grey matter of animal brains, particularly but not exclusively the cerebral cortex of primates, namely humans. We are, as Nikolai Fedorov wrote a century ago, the medium through which the planet thinks. Having folding some of its matter into the shape of brains and waiting a few million years for these blobs to sort it out, one of the things the Earth very recently learned is its own age. Earth is 4.6 billion years old. A confident figure for the age of the Earth came as late as 1953, the year that Beckett premiered Waiting For Godot. We, the Earth’s digestive residue, were able to discover and know the planet’s own duration (quite impressive seeing as how for most of our existence, we thought that the planet ran on our time!) Was this project, in which the Earth formulated from itself a biochemical intensity (aka humans) capable of knowing how old it is, worth the cost?" —Benjamin Bratton, On Anthropolysis

[crystalkitty1220]

Said I'd post this on my birthday, so here y'all go.

Hullabaloo is by Rare Americans. | IBVS is by onebizarrekai.

I scrapped this pmv/animatic (whatever you wanna call it) because the AU had changed a lot, plus I ran out of time on the computers I was working on, plus I wanted to make some artstyle changes, etc. You can find out more about curse!ibvs here.

In case you're curious, the original script is below the cut. I made some changes while drawing, which you can probably notice, but the core is still there.

Speaking parts: Drew Isaac Edward Chris Charlie Nevin Each character other than Drew will have a blob of colors floating around their head at all times, except when stated otherwise.

(Intro) Foxfield High School, losing color and becoming the desaturated and more dangerous appearance that signifies Curse!IBVS. Drew walks into Foxfield and down one of the halls, looking a little confused at his surroundings. There’s a duller and more monstrous appearance to everything, plus all of the kids don’t seem to recognize Drew. He’s very saturated compared to the rest of them.

“Excuse the renovations, our Doberman Dalmatians.” Edward blocks Drew’s view of the art room. Edward believes Drew is a new student. After all, he’d never met this kid before. Edward just wants this new guy’s first impression not to be “This place is full of weirdos.”

“We're just making preparations for the false flag operation.” Ed making excuses and walking down the hall, Drew in tow. Isaac, with only half of his face shown, raises an eyebrow and follows.

“Anyway, your participation in The Lemming Corporation includes two full weeks paid vacation, white-washed accommodations.” Edward is still talking to Drew while walking, purposefully blocking half of Isaac’s face every time the trumpet in the song makes a noise. Whenever Ed isn’t blocking it, something else is conveniently blocking it from the camera’s view.

“At the company plantation, there's a safe sensation, bottomless libations with your full cooperation.” Isaac ignores Edward and joins in with the tour, walking around Drew in a clockwise direction so the other half of his face still cannot be seen. At “full cooperation” Drew tugs on Isaac’s sleeve, and Isaac stops.

“Thank you for your patience…” Isaac says this, confused, and turns his head, so the drawing half of his face is finally on-screen and very much moving. Drew isn’t really scared at this part, just frightened/surprised.

“We're here to help, we're here to help you! You need not worry 'bout that” Edward interrupts and quickly tries to distract Drew from Isaac. At the five guitar strums, everywhere around Drew flickers into a colorful void. The colors are actually Edward and Isaac’s emotions, but Drew doesn’t realize this yet.

“Hullabaloo, hullabaloo, hull-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-laaaa-baloo” Drew, now panicking, looks around the void, and suddenly feels something touch his shoulder (this is Isaac, trying to see if Drew is okay, but Drew and the viewers are unable to see him). He freaks out and dashes down the invisible hallway, running into invisible walls and eventually finding an invisible corner to turn. There are different colors in the place he ends up in.

“Doom is the mood in the room.” The void fades back into reality, the colors fading away to reveal Chris and Charlie, arguing in an empty classroom. Neither have noticed Drew. No emotion colors at all in this part or the next.

“Evil looms, darkness lurks. Safety in numbers, members perks! Things are sad, they will get worse. We want you bad, this army church!” Chris appears to switch between different sides of the argument, but it’s actually him and Charlie arguing and flipping between who’s controlling Chris’ body.

“The fence is not a safe place for you to stay. Don't think you understand the forces at play!” They argue more, and Drew gets a headache so he holds his head in his hands.

“Care for a Serviette, James?” The room fades into colors once more, and Drew slumps against the invisible wall, head still in hands.

“You got Kool-Aid, kid, all over your face! Hear my words, sing my song…” Drew watches the colors swap places as the person speaking switches. That’s strange, ‘cause he was told Charlie wasn’t stuck with Chris anymore.

“Opportunities knockin, ding-ding-ity-dong!” Drew returns to reality, with Chris and Charlie talking to him. Charlie knocks on Drew’s head at the “ding-ding-ity-dong!” part, in an “earth to the new kid, wakey wakey” fashion.

“We're encrypted, subscripted, soldiers of the brand. Homo-lookalikes, million-man marching band.” Charlie points out that Drew looks so much like Nevin. Chris wants to leave this kid alone.

“So let me look ya in the eye straight when I ask ya!” Charlie talks to Drew, but Drew ignores him and stands up.

“Will you take my word? Will ya take my hand?” Drew wobbles over to the door, Charlie still talking to him in the background.

“Shake it, shake it, shake it! Shake my goddamn ole, wrinkly hand!” Drew looks down the hall and sees Edward’s and Isaac’s emotion colors getting closer (Drew has a sort of ‘shit, not again’ look), before he gets blinded by their and Chris/Charlie’s emotions again.

“Hullabaloo, hullabaloo, hull-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-laaaa-baloo! (Hull-a-bal-oo, hull-a-bal-oo)” Drew once again panics and runs through the colors, occasionally running into the walls of the invisible hallway.

“I got this buzzin' in my ear, it's here for good I fear, my dear.” He eventually gets far enough away that he can kinda see the hallway, and opens a difficult-to-see door he recognizes leads out to behind the school. He runs through the door, slams it closed and sits against the wall next to it.

“Got these spots in my sights like I can't turn out the lights…” He closes his eyes, holding his forehead.

“Sweat drips from my palms all day long. Don't wanna fuck this up man, I can't get this wrong! It's clear in my mind as a traffic jam, I think there might be something wrong with Uncle” A new set of colors fades in, returning Drew to utter blindness. He looks up, scared, and watches where he guesses the source of the colors is. The colors drop down to the point where the source (or a barely visible silhouette?) would be at eye level with Drew, and remain frozen like that for the entirety of “I think there might be something wrong with uncle-”.

“Graham…” Drew can once again see and the source of the emotions is revealed to be Nevin, who has carefully placed his hands on Drew’s shoulders reassuringly.

“It's calm in my head as a high-speed chase.” Drew and Nevin stand up, and Drew hugs Nevin. Nevin is surprised and sad, keeping his arms at least a few inches away from Drew.

“Got those memories man, that you can't erase.” Drew talks to Nevin, and Nevin gives a reassuring smile.

“I do what I gotta do.” Drew backs away and pulls on Nevin’s wrist to get him to run, and Nevin accidentally grabs onto Drew’s arm for support, causing Drew to grip his own arm and cry out in pain. Nevin steps back, horrified. His expression softens and shadows shield his face.

“Just run away from that” He then turns around to face the door and speaks. He knows Drew isn’t meant to be here (though he thinks Drew is a ghost or something). The world once again flickers into colors.

“Hullabaloo! Hullabaloo!” Drew stays for a moment, but decides to just start running the opposite direction of Nevin’s emotions, still holding onto his own injured arm.

“Hull-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-laaaa-baloo!” He runs far enough that the colors start fading away again.

“Hull-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-laaaa-” While running, suddenly a circular portal appears in front of him. He doesn’t have time to stop before he trips through it-

“-baloo!” -and finds himself on the floor of his bedroom, having fallen onto his injured arm. Afterward, he assumes he simply had a nightmare and fell off his bed, hurting his arm in the process.

[honey-minded-hivemind]

Sliding in for the sixth 🐉Wings of Fire aus' names lists are...

The ❄IceWings🦭!

The X-Men Members:

• Charles Xavier/Professor Xavier: Chill

• Ororo Munroe/Storm: Snowstorm

• Logan Howlett/Wolverine: Wolverine

• Scott Summers/Cyclops: Cirrus

• Jean Grey/Marvel Girl/Phoenix: Gray

• Hank McCoy/Beast: Hailstorm

• Anne-Marie/Rogue: Alabaster

• Remy LeBeau/Gambit: Lemming

• Kitty Pryde/Shadowcat: Periwinkle

• Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler: Walrus

• Jubilation Lee/Jubilee: Lynx

• Evan Daniels/Spyke: Everest

• Bobby Drake/Iceman: Boreal

• Piotr Rasputin/Colossus: Cumulus

• Illyana Rasputin/Magik: Icicle

• Rahne Sinclair/Wolfsbane: Reindeer

• Samuel "Sam" Guthrie/Cannonball: Gust

• Roberto da Costa/Sunspot: Caribou

• Danielle "Dani" Moonstar/Mirage: Moonstone

• Laura Kinney/Wolverine 2.0: Howlite

• Tabitha "Tabby" Smith/Boom-Boom: Ptarmigan

The Brotherhood:

• Erik Lehnsherr/Magnus/Magneto: Ermine

• Raven Darkholme/Mystique: Diamond

• Victor Creed/Sabretooth: Sable

• Pietro Maximoff/Quicksilver: Silver

• Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch: Sleet

• Mortymer Tonybee/Todd Tolanksy/Toad: Tern

• Fred "Freddy" Dukes/Blob: Firn

• Lance Alvers/Avalanche: Altus

• St. John Allerdyce/Pyro: Permafrost

(Quite the chilling amount, eh? 😊Here's something to cool off with...)

• Reader/Bby: Wolf, Snow Leopard, Snowy Owl, Puffin, Beluga, Moose, Vole, Taiga, Quartz, Nacre, Blizzard, Flurry, Squall, Iceberg, Igloo, Floe, Frost, Freeze, Frigid, Polar, Stratus, Nimbus...

[conscious-naivete]

the behind the scenes texts of after i tried to ask about romance killer’s title:

Lem: "The show with the tiny wizard"

"What?"

"He stole her cat"

me: and her parents!

Lem: Still a cosmically terrible way of asking that question

me: i got it from mom

Lem: Taken

me: i thought the tiny orange blob wizard would be the most memorable detail

Lem: I'm in it for the romance slop, Cons, I could give little less about the wizard

Also he doesn't have *that* much screentime

He’s a plot device for nerd loner gamer girl to get a boyfriend

opening hoopla and navigating comics > manga > romance, and then handing my phone to my brother like a millennial parent distracting their toddler

[highways-are-liminal-spaces]

A lot of you seemed interested in my last bird-related post, so my second round of birding in two days:

Today I took my roommate to a park along the Chicago lakefront to show her her first ever Snowy Owl. It’s been a surprising irruption year for Snowies in Chicago so far, with individuals found all along the lakefront over the last few weeks. The best way to find them is to scan along the breakwalls for white blobs—I have a spotting scope that I use, but several birders have been lucky enough to see them from car or bus along LSD.

This bird had clearly found a meal earlier this morning, because it was out of view for a few hours and, when it returned, had dried blood on its face. Contrary to a popular myth, these birds almost certainly didn’t fly south because of food scarcity in the arctic. These kinds of irruptions usually occur after boom-years in arctic food sources (primarily lemmings) that lead to more offspring, which then travel south due to competition in the north.

Snowy Owl, Rainbow Beach, Chicago.

12/03/21

[feastofcadavers]

A muffled, nervous voice would faintly be heard through the mental cotton in Lemon's ears. Eyes blinking slowly, he could have sworn he recognized a silhouette before him. Though unfocused, his arm haphazardly lifted itself to cup the face of a visage that looked similar enough to Caramel. Though little thoughts were running through his mind, a faint adoration for the one he had escaped with returning at a time like this would bring a strange form of peace.

Gradually, with some coaxing from the soft voice before him, Lemon's senses would come out of the dissociative fog that he was stuck in. Where there were colors meshed in a blob of unrecognizable mess came to be actual shapes. The colors seemed darker than his original perception had, and there was certainly a lot more green. Taking his other hand to rub out a majority of the leftover sight impairment, Lemon would come to find that the one he had recognized as precious to him was… Not that. A fuzzy and awkward laugh came from the one before the blonde, Lemon, before he truly recognized who he was holding by the cheek so gently. With an embarrassed huff, Lemon would jerk his arm back and avert his gaze. "Step back before I make you." He'd threaten, though it was clearly an empty one, not that it had to be fulfilled for Mint to follow through with it.

"You seemed really out of it…" Mint would gently remark, looking Lemon over and trying to ignore the red stains that were left on the blonde's leg. "Um… Aloe had the idea of just dragging you until we got out of there, so… We brought you to the softest spot in the woods. It feels like it, at least…" Lemon would simply roll his eyes, visibly showing not an ounce of care for what the two had done for him. "Whatever," he'd grumble, "at least we're not in those fields anymore. My question is, did we head out through the corn patch or the pumpkin one?" "Pumpkin." Aloe piped up, being a short distance away from them both and keeping their precious Co close to them. "The scent of blood was more intense this way, so it seemed like the way to go for going back to the mansion."

Lemon glowered at Aloe, idly sniffing the air to get a whiff of the bloodied scent that wasn't nearly as strong as it was before everything became a blur for him. Ugh, he swore he could feel a headache coming on just from trying to pry a memory from that. "Well, you picked the right way. If we keep going southwest, if you guys didn't take any turns, it shouldn't take too long. But, really? You had to take us right into feeding territory?" Aloe would take in a deep breath as if trying to keep themself from snapping at the most recent cursed. "We are all cursed here. The worst is that Roguefort finds us before we are prepared, and even then there would be too many running about for them to keep a close eye on all of us." "It is still a risky move. I thought you were supposed to be the smart one." "And I thought you were supposed to be the fearless hunter and hero of his dea-" The two most certainly were having tensions rise, but something would catch the hearing of the three of them to put a stop to it before things could get any worse between them. A trembling voice called out a name known to all three of them. Lemon.

"No way," Lemon would try keeping his voice within his throat, "No fucking way he found us. How?" A sudden fear would shake its way through the blonde, a few lingering sparks jittering off of his form. Aloof or simply too preoccupied with the fear through Lem's system, Mint would search through the trees to try and find the source of the voice. It's familiar. "Is it… that way?" The violinist would point out into the trees. There was certainly a figure out there. Short and somewhat stout. "I wonder who…"

"CARAMEL?!" Breaking out of his edgy shell for just a moment, Lemon would pick himself up, stumbling as he put his hands around his mouth for a makeshift megaphone. "Over here!! Get over here!! It's dangerous out here, what the hell are you doing?!" "Um!!" The voice responded, coming closer. Seems like it was Caramel. "Trying to find you!! I think!! Lemon?" "Yea, it's me!! I got the other monsters with me, too!! The, uh, the ones that aren't gonna kill us!" "I can see them!!"

Aloe would shake their head at the whole debacle whilst Caramel would bring himself into the group and promptly begin holding hands with Lemon. "You just spoke of how dangerous this place was, yet you start shouting the moment you get excited over someone you care for." "No shit, sherlock. You would have done the same." Lemon growled, though simply rolled his eyes and pressed his attention back onto Caramel. He seemed very tired from running over, but happy nonetheless. Lemon would have been smiling, too, but… With recent events, that was easier said than done. "So, nerd, how did you find us? Were you just wandering around to try and find me?" "Uh- Well-" Caramel would give a nervous laugh. "I decided to go back to the bar we were at before, and um… Sparkling said that- uh- you guys would be out this direction! He- he was super strange about it, though… I swear he acts like a-a prophet sometimes." Mint couldn't help but give a small laugh of pity. He certainly knew that Sparkling could be very mystical and mysterious when he wished to be. Though that wasn't the only thing about the bar he remembered. Though he didn't wish to intrude on the two, Lemon didn't seem keen on speaking at the moment, so he may as well fill in the gap. "Speaking of the bar," he'd start, "is Orie doing alright? The monochrome one." "Oh, him? Ummm… I-I think he mentioned that he wanted to come, too, but was too scared of getting eaten again? Not from you, but um, like, others…" The two would give a nod at each other. It didn't take much more than that to understand why Oreo would be terrified of leaving the bar.

Though there would be a moment of silence, Aloe would once again intrude, finally approaching the others to bring more attention to themself. They'd side-eye Lemon, then turn to Caramel to explain what needed to be stated. "We are heading back to the mansion to stop the reign of all the blood and gore being spread around this world. It is advised that you go back home if you do not wish to put yourself in danger." Caramel would look back at the researcher with wide eyes, then to Lemon, who reluctantly agreed. "As much as I hate to say it, they have a point. You should probably head back and-"

"N-no." Caramel interjected, taking Lemon aback. "I came out all this way to make sure you were okay. I- I kept thinking about you, worrying about where you were a-and if you were okay… Even if we'll be in danger, I'd rather face it with you than just- just being a damsel or hiding away… I'm not going back even if you want me to!" The hands held between the two would have a tightened grip. Lemon would finally have a moment of weakness, showing visible concern for Caramel before giving a deep sigh and… nodding. Though it was more than stressful with the new urges that went through his system, he… couldn't simply leave Caramel alone. Not at a time like this. "Fine. If it makes you feel better, you can come with. But if anything happens to you, know damn well that I'll never forgive myself for it." "A-and neither will I if anything happens to you…!"

Aloe would nod, looking between the two, then Mint, then out into the woods. "The forest grows thicker on the way there… Stick together so no one gets lost in the trees." They'd murmur, remaining focused as they'd begin to walk away. Mint would follow after, and the duo would stick close to each other behind him. At least the woods would eventually become familiar to navigate… somewhat.

[immieswritings]

DREAM SMP PRONOUN HEADCANONS

Antfrost: he/him, whisker/whiskers/whiskerself

Karl: he/him, spri/spir/spring/springs/springself, honk/honks/honkself

Sam: he/him, they/them

Niki: she/her, maca/roon/roons/macaroonself

Bad: he/him, bu/burn/bur/burns/burnself, they/them

Phil: good luck finding pronouns phil doesn't like. defaults to he/him but so far, caw/caws/cawself is his favorite neos that someone has given him

Skeppy: they/them, dia/diam/diams/diamonds/diamondself.

Ponk: he/him, they/them, she/her, lem/lems/lemon/lemonself, bonk/bonks/bonkself.

Dream: they/them, blob/blobs/blobself, dri/drie/driz/drizzleself

Punz: they/them, ag/ags/agself, fe/fer/feir/feirs/feirself.

Sapnap: he/him, warm/warmth/warms/warmthself

Purpled: xe/xem/xer/xers/xemself, lun/lunar/lunarself, he/him if absolutely necessary.

Puffy: she/her, they/them

Quackity: he/him, quack/quacks/quackself, di/dice/diceself

Eret: he/him, they/them, she/her.

Ranboo: en/end/ends/enderself, boo/boos/booself.

Foolish: he/him, gol/gold/golds/goldself

Charlie: it/its, sli/slime/slimes/slimeself, goo/goos/gooself.

Fundy: he/him, kit/kits/kitself

Techno: it/its, hie/hir/hirs/hemself. or just use techno's name. nothing else.

George: he/him, mu/mush/room/rooms/mushroomself

Tommy/Clementine: he/him (or she/her), mo/moth/moths/mothself, rac/raccoon/raccoons/raccoonself

(im sorry im a fan of the clementine innit idea </3)

Jack: he/him

Tubbo: he/him, they/them, bee/bee/bees/beeself, bu/buz/buzzself

Schlatt: ram/rams/ramself.

Wilbur: tu/tune/tunes/tunes/tuneself, he/him, dyna/mite/dynamite/dynamiteself, boom/booms/boomself.

(i have some for the hermits as well, if anyone is interested in hearing those as well!)

[lurkerdemon]

We Have a Blob-lem - Part 2

====

(Part 2 continuing from this)

In which I have decided to give this random drabble a name.

====

“Stay safe!”

Orphan waved to the civilian as she grappled away. She could already hear the beep on her com from Oracle to signal the police were coming to pick up the muggers. Regardless, she picked a building alcove and watched the would-be victim continue down a few blocks before she was satisfied with things being resolved. That and she had to wait up for her partner after all.

Speaking of, she felt a brief chill settle on top of her shoulder followed by a quiet growl in greeting. One hand reached up to scratch the creature. She got another growl in response as she adjusted her position a little higher.

“Sorry. Good job. Helped.”

The cold spot shifted and she felt the slight pressure of something moving into the corner of her hood. Cass smiled and used a finger to reach in and continue scratching. Minutes passed while she sat and took the time to enjoy the night air. Her patrol had ended anyway, nothing lost in taking some time for her own silent watch.

A small grumble from her hood notifies her before she sees a familiar green glow on a rooftop below. The moment after is tense until she recognizes white hair and a monochromatic outfit. Cass readies herself and then swings down behind the building’s air conditioning unit, the entire maneuver silent as she peeks from the shadows.

Danny meanwhile was having the worst game of “cold or less cold.” Which is not a nuanced scale when the person seeking is already a few notable degrees below normal body temperature. He swore he felt the tiniest hint of his ghost sense though, and it definitely got stronger when he flew higher up. 

And as if on queue to taunt him, he saw another tiny puff of mist escape his mouth. He floated just a little higher and groaned. Where the heck was this thing?!

“I swear if this is Skulker or something he’s getting souped for a week.”

He frowned as he felt the chill go down to more of a cool breeze. Okay so not that way. Danny poked his head (literally) through the wall of what would be the rooftop stairway access. Annnnnd nope. At least it wasn't in the building. Yet.

He pulled his intangible body back with a sigh, one loud enough that he almost missed the muffled giggle. A quick spin to the right and- nothing. Then he feels a tap on his opposite shoulder. Brows knitting together, he glares to the left.

Nothing. Again.

The rooftop took on a green glow as Danny exhaled in one long hiss of annoyance. Halfway through he noticed the freezing mist that came with it and swung around to-

“Ca-Orphan!”

(Which he definitely said totally normal and did not yelp.)

Cass’s face was an inch or two from his own, mask and hood covering most of it. Danny swore he could still feel the grin underneath though. He instinctively took a step backwards at the close proximity.

Which of course had to make him trip, gravity about to acquaint him with the stone rooftop if he hadn't levitated at the last second.

He floated upwards laying horizontal, arms crossed. “I meant to do that.”

Cass raised an eyebrow. Danny cleared his throat. “So uh, what brings you here?”

“Feeding the baby.”

He blinked. “Feed what now?”

She reached inside of her hood, hand slow and gentle as she pushed the fabric aside. Then bringing her hands together to cup something in front of her, her blob ghost companion flickered back into the visible spectrum with a small huff at having its nap interrupted.

Danny blinked again. “Is that a tiny Batman cowl?”

Cass nodded, scratching the top of the blob who rumbled happily in response.

“Helper. Calms civilians.”

He floated closer, examining the creature for a moment.

“They got… bigger.”

Cass shrugged. “Big meal?”

Danny raised an eyebrow.

“And B said it had to stay at the manor.”

Cass just stared him straight in the eye. Both of them knew he didn't care long before he finally broke and cracked a smile.

“Well at least I know my ghost sense wasn't on the fritz. Think it eats Batburger?”

“No. You do.”

“Aww, you know me so well. Let's go!”

- - - -

Turns out Blob ghosts do eat BatBurger. Or more accurately, absorbed Danny’s fries into itself and then refused to give them back until Cass coaxed it into letting go.

Danny just prayed Cass wouldn’t share the picture with Damian or he wasn’t gonna hear the end of it.

======

@breannasfluff

To clarify, I am working the above on what remember seeing of DP fanon on "ghosts can feed on emotions."

Ergo, blob invisibly slurps up victim's negative emotions so people hopefully have less trauma due to a brush with crime.

Food for the pet and helps people, so win-win.

(Just no one tell Bruce)

[blood-orange-juice]

Two fanfiction AU ideas I'll probably never write.

The first one is for The Last of Us HBO series. What if mushroom zombies share a permanently euphoric collective consciousness. Ecstatic even. Everyone is so miserable in that story that it would make perfect sense if turning into a constantly high zombie was somehow better.

Lotus eaters trope but darker. Come, join your mycelium with your brothers, dance with them, get all the love you were never able to get as a human.

(and that kiss scene in episode 2 would make so much sense then)

The second one is The Blob from Genshin Narcissenkreuzers' quests acting like Lem's Solaris. Morphing into bodies of all kind, exploring, mimicking what characters' want to see.

It's not the same in Tarkovsky's movie but when I read the ending of the book I was left with a very clear feeling: the characters witnessed the birth of a god.

Let Carter be that. That pathetic, good-for-nothing assistant accidentaly turned into an abomination certainly deserves to be the source of a new universe. One where no one will remember Narcissenkreuz Ordo. There's poetic justice in it.

[hailbop1701]

ReaperXFemaleReader

Doom: To Hell And Back

Chapter 5: Oh Hell No...

Hey everyone! Chapter 5 is finally done. I really struggled with this one for some reason. And I hope there aren't toooo many typos. Thanks again to @thottiewithashotgun for the editing as always. Doom doesn't belong to me I'm just messing with the characters and storyline a little bit.

You walked over to where Sam and Duke were whispering quietly, at the sound of your footsteps Duke looked up and gave you a toothy smile. “There she is. You all good?” he asked and you grimaced. “I’ll live. I’m gonna need to burn all of my gear though.” you grumbled.

Sam laughed softly and looked at you with a critical eye, “You said you were going to be careful.” she accused. You sighed and blew a strand of hair from your face, “I guess it’s not my lucky day.” you offered with a shrug.

Sam snorted and shook her head, “I feel like that happens often.” she whispered, making Duke snort. You glared at her without any of the heat and pulled your vest back on slowly. Wincing slightly as your shoulder and ribs twinged, Sam pulled the vest around you and helped zip it up. 

“Thanks,” you muttered and turned when Sarge stalked over, “Where are your surface entry points?” he asked voice tight. Sam hesitated for a second, “There’s a pressure door at the end of the north corridor” she said voice steady. Sarge nodded, “Destroyer, Kid, Portman, get there on the double. Give me an update.” he ordered to the three, who all nodded. “Whatever this thing is it cannot get back through the Ark,” 

Sarge then spoke directly into his Comm. “Mac, I want you to arm Pinky with a weapon, with some ST grenades, and seal the Ark door.” Sam perked up beside you, “There’s another door.” she said wide eyed. Sarge looked at her again, “Where?” he asked and Sam shifted and glanced at John for the briefest moment. “The entrance to the archeological dig.” she said with a sigh. You moved over to the open body bag and knelt down; you examined the creature with careful eyes. ‘What are you?’ you mentally ask. Reaching down you grip your knife’s hilt and give a sharp tug to free it from the demons skull. You lifted the blade and looked at it carefully in the light, a mixture of light and dark blood cover it. “Just like the other’s” you murmur. Sarge squats down next to you, “What do you think?” he asked quietly. Pursing your lips you think about what you have seen so far, “I can only make an educated guess. But I think it might be in the blood.” you said with a shrug, “I’m not an expert.” you added as Sarge opened his mouth to push you for more. He gave you a look that said a lot, 'elaborate,' was one of them.

“I think an autopsy would reveal a few things.” you offered your C.O. who in turn huffed impatiently. You both stood up, “I heard there was a body in Genetics; permission to get a blood sample?” you asked,  hopeful. Sarge looked down at you, eyes narrowed. He looked at you for a long moment before nodding. “Granted, don’t take too long. In and out and back here on the double.” he said. “Yes sir,” you said and sheathed your knife.

You moved around the room gathering the supplies you needed and stopped to reload both your main weapon and your sidearm. “Sam, can you start on an autopsy while I’m gone?” you asked your new friend. Sam had a few different expressions flit across her face before she stuck with determination. She nodded and looked at the body bag as if it was going to come alive at any moment.  You moved with others through the nanowall with a small wave to the two left behind.

You breathed in through your nose and steadily out your mouth; up toward the front of the line Sarge was losing his patience with Portman; again. You moved into the hallway that lead to the labs and the door sealed with a hiss behind you. Reaper quietly walked next to you and looked like he wanted to say something. He seemed to stop himself everytime he tried. “Something on your mind John?” you asked with a raised eyebrow. John hummed and looked down at you, “You sure you want to go off alone?” he asked and you rolled your eyes. “I’ll be fine. Nothing I can’t handle.” you reassured your voice betraying your annoyance. 

John chuckled, “I know you can handle it. If the dead demon in the infirmary was any indication. I just...be careful, okay?” he said carefully. You smirk and nudged him with your working arm, “Daaaaw, does this mean we're friends now?” you asked teasingly. John grumbled refusing to look at you out of spite. “I’ll be fine. In and out, like Sarge ordered.” you said stopping at the hall where you split up. 

Reaper looked at you for a second longer before nodding and heading off with the others. Taking a deep breath you turned back to the dark dimly lit corridor you had to traverse down. “I have the survival instinct of a lemming.” you muttered to yourself as you moved forward. The only sound was your light footsteps on the grated floor and your heart pounding in your ears. Tense with your rifle partially raised you look at each door hoping to happen upon genetics some point soon. As alert as you were your mind still drifted, ‘John was being weird. I mean I just met the guy; well his sister was worried about me too. Maybe it’s a Grimm thing. They have bad blood with this place. Sam's sweet, I'd hang out with her outside of all this if I got the chance. I should talk to her about that. John...I dunno. I don't think he'd ever talk to me outside of work.’ you thought and stopped short. Turning your head you read the plaque by the door. 

Genetics 

“Finally.” you breathed and moved to enter the room. You tapped at the door controls, and the door swooshed open. You looked into the dark room with mild apprehension, “Okay, ominous darkness; Check. Dead animal’s everywhere; Check. Giant spiderweds; Che-” you cut yourself off and take another look around the room. You aimed your rifle up and down the walls so you can see with your flashlight. Very large white webbs coated the room, “Oh this, I don’t like this at all.” you muttered with a shudder. Moving further into the room, you quickly scan the floor for the dead body that was reported. You saw a turned over table, blood, and debris but no body. 

“Fantastic.” you muttered and scanned the surrounding area again. You passed by a large terrarium that looked like it had seen better days, it was cracked and shattered on one side. You read the papers sitting next to it. “Test one complete on Birdeater arachnid. Oh hell no.” you whispered and whipped around training your gun on what you thought was watching you. All that was there was a white webbed blob of a figure stuck to the wall. “Found the body.” 

The hair on the back of your neck stood straight, something was definitely watching you. You slowly made your way over to the sack and pulled out your knife. Pulling your flashlight from your rifle you stuck it between your teeth so you could work. The bitter taste of the metal coated your tongue making you wrinkle your nose in distaste. You carefully cut the webbing away revealing an arm. Sheathing your knife, you calmly pulled a syringe from your hip bag.

As you uncapped the syringe a chittering came from behind you and it sounded big; swallowing thickly you stuck the needle into what you hoped was a vein and pulled the plunger back. You breathed a sigh of relief through your nose when you saw the curdled blood slowly fill the syringe. The chittering and hissing became louder behind you, squeaking you pulled the needle from the arm and capped it. The sound of shouting came over the Comms again. Something bad obviously happened but you couldn’t be concerned about it at that moment. You turned around slowly as you worked to reattach your light. 

And there it was; much, much bigger than it should be. The size of your aunt's old VW Bug, too big. Half up on the ceiling and half on the wall across from you one of it’s eight brown legs tapped in a slow beat, “Crow, report!” your Comm. screamed. Without taking your eyes off the spider you cautiously moved backwards toward the door doing your best to avoid the turned up tables and equipment. Glass crunched under your boots making you wince, the spider blinked and it's two front hooked legs tapped the wall in quick succession, “Crow, report damn it!” Sarge screamed at you through your Comm. 

Looking through your peripheral you saw that the door was closer now. You bumped into a cage of a mutilated cat making it tooth achingly squeal across the floor. The spider hissed and moved down the wall and onto the floor, a couple of it’s legs lifted onto a few stacked cages to accommodate for the lack of room. 

Taking a deep breath you quickly twisted and made a sprint for the door. A loud angry hissing erupted behind you and you broke through the threshold. In an afterthought you hit the button to close the lab door. A bang echoed behind you as you stumbled in the direction you came in. “Sorry Sarge, I uh found I dunno what that was. I locked it in genetics.”  you said almost breathlessly. “Get back to the infirmary on the double!” Sarge barked. “Ye-”you were cut off by the sound of a loud bang and crash. “Ah crap.” you muttered and watched as the giant spider squeezed through the doorway of the lab. You fired off a few shots before turning to sprint down the hall. “Report Crow!” Sarge ordered,

“It broke down the fucking door!” you yelped, skidding to a halt and firing off a few more shots. The spider screeched in pain and reared up on it’s back legs, “What is it?” Duke asked over the channel. You fired two more shots before turning and running again, “Spider, very big spider”

The line was silent for a second, “You’re joking!” Portman laughed as you banked a corner. A loud crash behind you caused Portman’s laughter to stop abruptly. "Shit, shit, shit," you chanted turning the corner leading to the airlock door. You saw that it was torn open and dove through it, the demon spider hissed behind you. You turned to see that it slowed down before following you through. 'It learned?' You thought dumbstruck, 'I need a plan, come on think of something (Y/N)!' And that's when you remembered Hunter's gift. Small explosive disks, perfect for taking down walls and giant spiders. 

Running through the atrium you pulled two disks from your belt and slid to your knees; you clicked in the centers and twisted around, with a flick of the wrist you tossed them. They slid for a second before coming to a stop under the arachnid. It screamed and reared up again, pulling your sidearm out you emptied the clip into its center mass. It stood there a moment before falling to the ground and curling in on itself. Panting you fell back onto your butt, “I think I got it.” you said breathlessly. You looked up  and was taken aback; everyone was there, weapons ready. Duke and the Kid started cheering and whooping in delight, Destroyer clapped and grinned. Sarge’s lip twitch and he nodded in approval. Sam’s eyes were wide as she took in the creature. Portman simply looked at it in disgust. Reaper walked over and pulled you to your feet, “Spider, huh?” he asked and you scowled. “I hate spiders.” 

You watched as Sam walked around the demon spider, fascination written all over her face. “This was in genetics?” she asked you, eyes wide. “Yup, in all of it’s creepy glory.” you said wrinkling your nose. “It’s male. It has to be Herman.” she said crossing her arms. “Herman?” John asked dryly. Sam nodded, ‘Did you see Karen too?” she asked and your mouth dropped, “Karen? You mean there’s two of them?” you all but shouted. Sam winced, “yeah one male and one female.” she said looking back down at the creature. 

 You looked up at Sarge innocently, “So what did I miss?” 

Tags:

@thottiewithashotgun

@dw-writes

@lauraaan182

@marvelouslytrekking

[leafbloggy]

Aw Shucks

So, here's my first real post. I'm just gonna start with the game I just finished today, cuz that just makes sense.

The game is Oh Jeez, Oh No, My Rabbits Are Gone!!!, a title which is very difficult to search for online without just getting posts about rabbits.

OJONMRAG is a simple little puzzle-platformer wherein you rescue your 100 lost bunnies. It plays, for lack of a better comparison, like a mix of Lemmings, Another World, and A Boy and His Blob. I would argue, though, that the aspects borrowed from those games are pretty much all executed better here, which is an impressive feat. The main gameplay loop is exploring an area to find bunnies, and then directing those bunnies past obstacles in order to rescue them.

The controls are... Mixed. They are a bit clunky, and it took quite a while for me to truly feel accustomed to them. That clunkiness isn't without reason, though: it's a cost of precision. This game has a very obvious grid layout, and every action, every jump and climb and run, moves you a very set, consistent distance. In a puzzle game like this, the benefits of that really can't be understated. It allows for much cleaner, more nuanced puzzles, where there's no need to worry about players getting stuck trying to jump up a wall that goes nowhere or fixating on a rock. It focuses both the design and the player, which is very welcome in a climate where puzzle games largely feel a pressure to think far outside the box, regardless of how that fits with the game.

It's like... A sokoban. Imagine a sokoban where nothing is rigid, boxes aren't stuck to the grid, and so forth. Sure, it could be done. It probably has been. But not needing to be that lets sokoban games more easily be designed with other challenges in mind.

Moving on, there's not too much to be said about the actual structure of the game, I think. It's solid. Good, even. The world feels real, the exploration feels like... exploration. It's good. It took me about 4 hours to beat, finding all the bunnies but missing a couple color palettes (finding them lets you change the main character's colors.)

As an added bonus, you start the game with a range of color palettes based on pride flags.

Finally, visually, the game is adorable. It's the kind of aesthetic that needs to be sincere to shine, and oh boy is it sincere. There's cute bunnies, cute landscapes, and cute gay girls. It's everything you could want in a cute game.

And yes, you can pet the bunnies.

[ajebjorkman-blog]

The Long Cold Open to Socialism or Barbarism... or Party Space Alpha

Recently, I bumped into a few of those unfortunate zombies propelled into mindless shuffling by the absolute horror of the hollow center; and, if it’s the case that the concept of the hollow center draws a blank—the dank whiteness of the silver screen before some Clint Eastwood shooting-gun-male-sociopath-revenge-drama—try to imagine a vast pit of waste, much like the overarching metaphor of Don DeLillo’s mind-numbingly boring Underworld. All in all, though, and to cut my tendency toward preciousness to at best shorter, the hollow center is cra(aa)p—the hollow center is a space endlessly differentiated and endlessly atomizing and endlessly unfeeling, and as is the case with the very idea of all things endless (whatever that may mean), time and history stops to matter, specifically history. The end of history has already happened, though, with the fall of the Soviet Union—at least according to Frances Fukuyama. He’s still alive, right?  

Or, or… 

or think of the hollow center like this: it’s the forever-noon party—or whatever time of day the elderly booze up and kick down—of Hypercharged Capital held at Party Space Alpha.  

Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek are adored keynote speakers, brought back from the dead by scientism-magic to white-counter the supposed browning of the world, or, as some religious zealots opine, the existential threat of the tainting of the world.

Rand says, “The worst guilt is to accept an unearned guilt.”

The crowd cheers and chants, “Galt! Who the fuck is Galt!!?”

Friedman says, “Shock, shock, shock!”

The crowd cheers and chants, though quizzingly, “Who is Galt?”

Hayek says something about force from afar as a corrective while the crowd tries to find the one voice who said, “Galt is Atlas, no? Greek stuff, I think.”

After speeches and rants, lobotomized servants serve finger food from gold platters, and Ted Nugent takes the stage, humps his guitar and sings about pedophilia and freedom.

And look at those skeletons shuffle and jig, some pumping their fists and whiplashing their necks.

Joy and sanity, re-enter my world. You enter Party Space Alpha, try to get a feel for the place, and you think:

So this is where I’ve come to.

You mingle...and look, there’s one of those Zoomer-influencers you’ve heard about, always be gramming.  

“What I’m trying to do, see,” the Zoomer-influencer says, “is to make jokes about race and fucking and such, you know, make them great again, hint, hint.” (Yes, he says hint, hint out loud-) Also, ”That dead man hanging. Sad, very sad. I already said I’m sorry, ok!” He storms off, leaving you to think about things when a hand, moist, so moist, graces your shoulder.

You turn around. A somewhat cross-eyed dude—on closer inspection, however, he’s not cross-eyed, just dead-eyed—speaks to you in an affected, puppet-like voice, like his vocal chords are somehow placed inside his Adam’s apple.

The dead-eyed dude with weird Adam’s apple-voice says, “Want to discuss ideas?”

You nod. You’re already here, you think, so why not. You throw a few ideas up for consideration and deliberation: Socialized housing and healthcare, that’d be a good start, you think, after which you mention structures of oppression and that they’re crap; you mention essentialism, the idea of Spinozian substances and God-given grace and soul and pineal gland homunculus’ puppetry and phrenology and sociobiology and Steven Pinker, and how these fucked up descriptive statements prescribe fucked up social agendas; you skip from Hume (you can’t experience causality, am I right) to Kant (Let’s critique pure reason, am I right) through Hegel (History isn’t purely spiritual, am I right) to Marx. Also, because why not, and it’s not really and ad hominem,  you mention that it would be quite funny to create a Japanese game show where libertarians, fascists, conservatives, and dangerously daft liberals are mildly tortured for the prize of cool trinkets.

The dead-eyed dude nods, furrows his brow and smacks his tongue—a hint of anxiousness, like eels speeding his dead eye-water, momentarily turns him somewhat human. He says:

“I see. But you see, I want to discuss high-level ideas, like do you have an iPhone? If so, you’re no oppressed.”

You leave because the dead-eyed weird dude was about to have a stroke, or so it seemed, ranting about oppression O(h)lympics and whatever else.

From the corner of the vast space, a dwarfed dude with a boyish bowl-cut speedily espouses that facts don’t care about your emotions and that the labor theory of value is anachronistic balderdash. He espouses this to a party-fun-house-mirror, in training for debate-destroying. To his right, arms crossed, stands a gang of clean-shaven dudes. They all wear Fred Perry- shirts. They’re all sweaty, and their sweat forms a cloud, and the cloud spells: We Are Disenfranchised Also, Blue Lives Matter. Also, one of the dudes holds a katana. Lord knows why. Another dead-eyed dude-bro-boy close by—there’s so many of them, more or less affective, this one like a flat line—explains that the Lord is dead, which, sure, you think, sounds like a shame.

In a dull monotone, the Flatliner continues:

“The hadith… the muslem or Mos-Lem religion, Islam—that explains the katana. It’s a necessary precaution to ward off the onslaught—and don’t take me out of context, please, I’m only ideating like Socrates in the, eh, in the Atheneum.  

“What onslaught?” you ask.

“It’s a moral priority to honestly and openly assess the geopolitical and, eh, moral consequences of the actual content of the Quran, and, eh… so, turning a blind eye to, eh, to statistically significant increases in, eh, rape and… so rape and terror, yes terror—that’s not only morally ambiguous, it’s morally vacuous, and my contention and intention as a civil Western…”

“Sorry to interrupt, but I do wonder what you think about this, Mr. Flatline: Socrates was deemed dangerous and such, right, and he was killed by the state for riling up the hoi polloi, for advancing critical thinking and debate. He was force-fed that killing drink, right, the one that killed him off in increments from feet to head. So, as a latter-day Socrates, will you help me understand if there is an analogy between being forced to drink the killing drink and, how should I phrase it—being coerced to drink the Kool-Aid, in that both drinks literally kills off something? I know it’s somewhat heady and not entirely coherent, but you know, nothing is entirely coherent. Contradictions and that.”

“Well, this is typical muddying of the water…”

“Or muddying the fluid? Kool-Aid, killing drink, Kool-Aid, killing drink…”

“Woo-woo. If you look at the end of my first book, in the last footnote of the epilogue, I clearly refer to a footnote in a blog post about this subject, and that footnote, if only you’d just read it—it clearly refers to what I said in my podcast some year or so ago, so.”

You leave, not daring to continue what already initially was a torturous exchange. You start to feel heavy and kind of fragmented at the same time. Weird.  

   Somewhere else in Part Space Alpha an orange blob in diapers eats hamburgers and ribs and chocolate and wipes the drooping and drooping corners of his mouth with the flag of Palestine while a hunched over assistant takes notes:

NEED TO BUY MORE FOOD FOR LEADER. (It’s so Alpha to capitalize notes.)

Someone fires a gun into the air and laughs amidst applause. Such a nice gun! The orange blob stops munching and laughs without it sounding like laughter. He just opens his mouth and shows his teeth. He says:

“My guy. Give him a tank.” He realizes, shouts: “Where’s my African American!”

No one responds or arrives. There’s few to no black or brown people in Party Space Alpha; also, quite a few women dare venture into Party Space Alpha, because… Party Space Alpha.

Hunched over one of the few women present, Slender Man in a fedora and a pinstriped suit berates and gestures and cries a little:

“The absence of women in Party Space Alpha forms the materiality of the legitimacy of the perceived subordination of those young men to whom the existential and the individual necessity of sexual intercourse is denied. If only these young men were allowed to slap and slap happily, there’d be mental equilibrium.”

Enough.

You exit by the back door unto the Wasteland, your only refuge from the constant violence of Party Space Alpha; and you’re not feeling morally vacuous for being ok with the idea of this vast space somehow eating itself to death. So, Party Space Alpha is the hollow center. It WILL fuck you up.

[eisforeidolon]

Unhuman Nature

Honestly, if I actively wanted to watch a terribly written fantasy soap opera, I'll bet there are more entertaining ones out there I could find.  I felt like this episode desperately wanted me to be emotionally invested in a lot of really ridiculous and completely over-the-top soapy bullshit that neither the episodes preceding it nor this one actually did the work to earn – at least not from me.

It's Bucklemming so this is yet another episode filled to the brim with Nick bullshit.  I'm seriously supposed to care about Nick's wailing angst over a murder that happened to characters we didn't even meet alive nine seasons ago? LOL.  I'm supposed to be, what, scared by him becoming a bog-standard human serial killer when even Pellegrino’s Lucifer hasn't been scary in several seasons?  Yawn. I should be in any way drawn in by this story about the influence of possession on a human vessel when exploring that would be a million times more interesting with the actual main characters and it's written with all the subtlety and nuance of a brick to the face?  Oh, please. Not to mention that it would actually be more interesting if demons hadn't killed Nick's family, that's how predictable and unnecessary this plotline is.  The only thing that separates Nick and his family from every other group of randos harmed by monsters along the way is Ross-Lemming's Pellegrino thirst.  The amount I absolutely do not care cannot be understated.

I think we're supposed to be sympathetic to the Winchesters being flummoxed by being questioned trying to admit Jack to the hospital?  Like, normal people would be flustered by their worry in that situation, so we should feel it more?  Except I wasn't sympathetic, because the Winchesters aren’t normal people - I thought it just made them look like idiots.  Castiel, okay, him not knowing how anything works in that situation makes sense.  Sam and Dean though?  Within the show itself they've had to check themselves, each other, and other people they care about into the hospital.  So they should damn well know how hospitals are about insisting on getting information upfront, and yet they don't discuss what to say for Jack in advance when they're thinking about taking him in?  Let alone when they're in the car driving him there?  No, of course they don't, because these writers are perfectly happy to make the characters idiots or OOC to do a “dramatic” scene they've decided they want.

Speaking of which, I already reposted some people pointing it out at the time, but the scene with Rowena not knowing who Jack is another example of that.  She literally said his name when she was taunting Lucifer last season, but Bucklemming don't give a shit about continuity and desperately wanted a scene of pathetic woobie Jack convincing Rowena to stay after she was upset about his existence/possible evil.  Pay attention to something in someone else's episodes?  Ha, like they even pay attention to what's in their own!  The thing is, Rowena being reluctant to help Jack and Jack playing on Rowena's desire to be appreciated by thanking her (without any awareness how persuasive that particular tack is) could actually work just fine if it wasn't proceeded by Rowena's sudden inexplicable bout of amnesia.  Hell, the whole thing where she comes rushing in thinking Sam has called her to help save Dean would actually work better if they had remembered she already knew who Jack was!

Then there's the part where archangels can juice themselves up on regular ol’ angel grace, but Jack, of course, has a whole new set of special rules where that can't work because reasons.  That's pretty much how all powers in this show work now, so I'm not surprised, just disappointed.  I could maybe even forgive that for Jack because we haven't had a nephilim character before and they are meant to be a fairly rare and unique hybrid creature, but when the rules for bog standard witches and angels seem to change every single time they show up on screen, I am over it.  

So the episode opens and Sam, Dean, and Cas are all SO CONCERNED about Jack.  Yet for some reason, Dean is the only one that goes with him on his “live life for a day” trip, because …  Okay, Castiel goes off to meet with Ketch's contact, Accent Guy.  So at least there was an excuse there and he was trying to do something theoretically productive.  But Sam just stays in the bunker … because ... it's not like he and Dean would have gone through every bit of information on nephilim that's in there already when they thought he was a threat.  Or again when he lost his grace to begin with so they’d know what to expect.  Going back through the material they have absolutely no reason not to have read already certainly couldn't be pawned off on the suddenly  AWOL AU!hunters who literally, personally owe Jack their lives.  Nope, that would make them actually useful for once, so Sam had to stay behind for reasons.

Look, I'm not saying I didn't like the scenes with Jack and Dean, because I did.  Nor that I didn’t appreciate the brief bit of Impala porn in the teaching-Jack-to-drive segment.  Nor that if I was going to pick only one of those three for a fun last-day-alive romp, it wouldn't be Dean.  With that said, there was literally no reason for Sam to stay back when he's had the closest relationship to Jack overall – it was one of the most transparently ridiculous times the Winchesters have been split up recently for reasons and that is seriously saying something.   It’s not like Dean would be magically unable to develop more of a connection with Jack, if that was the whole intent, if Sam was also there.  Even from the angle of Sam sometimes coming off like a killjoy, I don't believe he wouldn't be willing to indulge a dying Jack in the same way he's sometimes been willing to indulge Dean when he was in peril or down (early season 3, Plucky, Advanced Thanatology, etc.)if he’d gotten the same speech from Jack about wanting to live a little more in what time he had - and they all but asked for Sam’s permission to go before leaving anyway. 

Part of what makes it so ridiculous is how hard other parts of the episode were selling the contrived, fanfiction-borrowed Jack-is-their-smol-son thing.  Again, this is something I know a lot of other people are actually into, but it really isn't working for me to the extent they're selling it.  I’m not saying they don’t care about him, but he's not literally their kid.  For one, he's not actually a child.  For two, most of the time where he and the Winchesters were actually together, it was because they were afraid he'd go darkside.  For three, a great chunk of the limited time he's been alive, he was in Apocaworld, not even with them.  It's bad enough that literally everybody is totally family now after, like, an episode.  It's bad enough Jack's personality is more often than not written as a beige blob of cutesy inoffensiveness.  Compounding it with this whole oh noes, our actual child has mystical consumption?  God, it's so contrived for the dramaz and so far as I'm concerned, tissue-paper thin if you take out all the fanfic and imagines posts written about it.  

Then there's the part at the end where Dean apologizes for taking Jack out for the day because … fuck if I know?  The reason Jack's worse at the end is because he was already dying and they tried some unknown spell thing from some sketchy contact Ketch knows, so if there's any guilt to be had there, which is dubious, it should be on trying some spell they know basically nothing about without trying to research it first.  Like, it felt like Bucklemming suddenly decided they couldn't end the episode without Dean gratuitously feeling guilty for something because his only real emotions are guilt and anger, so here you go!

Finally, gosh, if death ever really meant anything on this show anymore, this ending would totally be sad and shit.  As it is?  Even if I wasn't spoiled for future events, the only thing I feel is: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  Great job, guys.  Keep up the good work!

[tvparties]

So, even if deep time is one of the ways that we learn to de-link social and phenomenological time from planetary time, its discovery was made possible by an industry that operated on nature with the local conceit that ecological time is subordinate to social time, and now we have the “accidental” fulfillment of that superstition by the Anthropocene's binding of social and geologic time. By pursuing the illusion as if it were true, we discovered, as a by-product, that it was false, but the by-product of doing so is that we made it true.

What else do we know? What else are we good for? If as in Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris, the surface of the planet’s ocean was sentient, the planet Earth’s strategy toward sentience includes layered networks of neurons in the folded grey matter of animal brains, particularly but not exclusively the cerebral cortex of primates, namely humans. We are, as Nikolai Fedorov wrote a century ago, the medium through which the planet thinks. Having folding some of its matter into the shape of brains and waiting a few million years for these blobs to sort it out, one of the things the Earth very recently learned is its own age.