#9 of them either didn’t actually take it or something weird happened

[thatguywhodoesstuff]

Some Unsorted Thoughts Regarding Murder Drones Episode 7 & Episode 8

Hopping back online for a moment to post a bunch of unsorted thoughts & mini-theories about the upcoming episodes:

Nori and Yeva are well and truly dead, and didn’t fake their deaths like I’ve seen others theorize. Despite this, I can picture them directly being involved with the plot via some convoluted Absolute Solver related shenanigans.

Personally, I like to think all Drones can save, edit, & transfer copies of their memories in a manner akin to saving files onto a flash drive to transfer over to another computer to be modified. This isn’t all that far fetched given how V and N’s memories were altered and how Uzi managed to help recover them.

Going off of the above points and the fact that each episode lampoons a different horror genre, I feel that we are due a good ol’ fashioned psychological thriller. I can easily imagine the under depths of the labs being loaded with all sorts of Eldritch nonsense (like those decidedly organic hands that drag off N during the trailer) that will undoubtedly push everyone to their breaking point before episode 8 even happens.

I’ve always had the long-standing theory/belief that Khan actually knows more than he lets on. I know there isn’t a lot to back this up, but it’s just something I always thought would make sense given everything he’s managed to live through.

I am of the mind that Nori was not the one to cause the core collapse that wiped out the humans on Copper-9. If anything, I think it would be neat if the core collapse was a complete accident that actually prevented/delayed the Absolute Solver from destroying Copper-9, with the event simply happening to coincide with whatever hell Nori was undoubtedly raising at the time.

I’ve seen a number of people point out how Uzi seems to be in control of herself when she grips N’s hand, and while a number of people seem to interpret this as her being mad at him for keeping secrets, I’m not convinced that’s the case. My crackpot theory is that Uzi is going to learn some hard facts about her mother and she is not going to handle them well and, with everything else going on, needs N now more than ever for emotional support, probably at the expense of his own mental well-being.

The cathedral under Cabin Fever labs was either built by Drones already under the thrall of the AS or Drones like Alice who got trapped in the facility and went insane from the experience.

As for what purpose the cathedral actually serves, I feel it could’ve an actual place of worship for the Absolute Solver, just as easily as it could be a conduit to broaden the area of influence of the malevolent “program”. Then again, it could just as easily serve as both, sort of like a giant transmitter/receiver with a decidedly gothic style to it for added flair.

There is this weird feeling in the back of my head that we won’t get a proper confrontation between the gang and Doll and, in true subversive horror fashion, something will happen to her that takes her out of the plot, at least for the rest of the season.

Part of me wonders if the reason Tessa acted so strange during episode 6 is rooted in the trauma from CYN’s massacre. After witnessing that and implicitly having been seriously injured, it wouldn’t surprise me if Tessa is poorly coping with the situation at hand. I also can’t help but wonder if she’s got a touch of robophobia directed towards Solver infected Drones.

Out of everyone, I feel that N is the least likely to perma-die in the upcoming episodes. In pretty much every horror series I’ve ever watched the nice one (when they aren’t one of the first people to die) typically lives the longest so that the narrative can torment them, regardless of whether or not they eventually earn their happily ever after. I doubt that N is any different, and I fear that his suffering has yet to begin in earnest.

Doll also doesn’t seem likely to die just yet (but given how Liam doesn’t seem all that shy about killing off major characters when needed…), and I have a feeling that if given the chance she could become a valuable ally, even if the alliance itself would be pretty unstable at best.

Of the four, Tessa and Uzi have the highest number of death flags waving around them. One has to wonder which is worse, losing an old friend who didn’t dehumanize your every action, that you just recently remembered/reunited with or losing the first friend/love you have had in a long time, who has also helped you recognize your own self worth. Either way, N is going to be crushed by the loss, especially given the likelihood of it being at his own hands.

If Tessa dies, I imagine her final moments will involve her bemoaning how N has doomed everyone… only to impart words of encouragement to him and assure him that his loving nature isn’t a weakness and may be instrumental later down the line.

If Uzi dies (I wouldn’t put it past Liam to pull this), it will be in an intense heat of the moment situation that won’t immediately register to her or N. I also think that if Uzi does die, it will only happen in a physical sense. My logic being that since Uzi became N and V’s new Administrator in episode 5, she could continue existing as a voice inside N’s head (sort of like Zane and Pixel from Ninjago), which could also result in N developing Solver powers. Alternatively, Uzi just straight up dies and N has to live with the pain of losing two of his closest friends and his first and second loves… Not to mention the fact a dead Uzi gives the Absolute Solver the perfect ammunition to use against N in the future.

TLDR: That trailer gave me a lot of thoughts and with everything going on in real life, I haven’t been able to put them into text until now. Thank you for taking the time to read the inane ravings of a burnt out college student/part time shut-in. Likes and Reblogs are greatly appreciated…

…I really hope Uzi and N kiss in the season finale.

[deathmetalangel]

Hello there!

I wanted to ask for a request, only if you want though ^^'

What about some Hcs with Rose Quartz, Garnet, Lapis Lazuli y Peridot (sepparetly) reacting to a 13 year old fem!Gem!reader (who has very bad trust issues and avoids physical contact at all costs due to past trauma about being betrayed and puffed)

Coming to them crying after and tackling them into a hug them while rambling about how Amethist said that if she misbehawed Pearl was going to puff her (wich was obviosly a joke)

BAD JOKE HEADCANONS (GEMS X FEM! READER/PLATONIC)

warnings: mentions of poofing, ptsd

backstory: y/n is still a “new” gem only emerging from the ground about thirteen years prior to meeting the gems; however, almost all of that was spent in a bubble after being poorer by their original group of gems. some old homeworld loyalists that came to earth to hopefully “defeat” the crystal gems.

ROSE QUARTZ

- she feels SO bad

- rose was very patient with y/n after finding her so she knew about her boundaries and physical touch being a huge one

- so when she came up to her and just hugged her she knew something was wrong

- even if it was silly, she knew that y/n didn’t yet understand jokes and took everything quite literal

- comforts them by letting them cry and just being so understanding

- “take your time y/n. it’s okay, i’m here. don’t worry. amethyst was just teasing.”

- once she’s calmed down she explains that pearl said it as a joke mostly out of annoyance. she meant no actual harm

- brings her back to the temple to help her talk to amethyst about why she can’t joke like that

- even brings pearl over to have her assure y/n she would never do such a thing

- rose just wants y/n to know she’s safe with the crystal gems

- 10/10 very very comforting

GARNET

- y/n came running up to her while she was in the bubble room

- she knew it was serious because it was a place y/n tended to avoid because of what happened to her before they found her

- she just clings onto garnet crying about how amethyst told her pearl was going to poof her if she wasn’t a good crystal gem

- garnet seen it in a very unlikely reality so she was surprised that it actually happened

- garnet kneels down with y/n and just consoles her by petting her hair

- y/n can’t help but hold onto garnet for protection

- “amethyst was only joking. i predicted no real danger in your future. i understand your fear, but i assure you y/n. you are in no danger here.”

- ruby was a bit annoyed at amethyst as she knew fully well what you went through, but felt nothing wrong with her joke

- sapphire knew it was just a off handed comment to rile y/n up during a training session

- “take your time y/n. i know the thought of being poofed is traumatic. you have nothing to be ashamed of. i’ll make sure amethyst apologizes. it wasn’t right of her to say that.”

- pearl is even shocked amethyst says that

- promises she would never ever

- allows y/n to stay close by her side for a while even after amethyst apologizes

- 20/10 i love my red and blue moms

LAPIS LAZULI

- while lapis wasn’t one for touch either, when y/n came barreling into her arms she knew something serious happened

- it wasn’t unlike her to not take things very seriously, but she could tell that y/n was terrified

- “hey, what happened?”

- she honestly doesn’t know how to react much

- when y/n explains it lapis was so annoyed at amethyst

- “don’t worry. pearl won’t do anything. amethyst is just being mean. don’t let her get to you.”

- “but why would she say that?”

- hearing y/n cry broke her heart tbh

- “who knows. amethyst is weird. just ignore her like i do, but if her or pearl do every try anything don’t hesitate to come to me. i won’t let them do anything i promise.”

- after all y/n was just a terrified gem like they once were

- convinced them to calm down by just continuously promising she was strong enough to protect both of them (which she definitely was)

- 9/10 a bit awkward at first but great after

PERIDOT

- peridot had no idea what was happening when y/n just straight tackled them while bawling her eyes out

- “uh did you know you’re crying?”

- “amethyst said pearl was going to poof me if i acted up or misbehaved! they promised me they were different! they all said they were nothing like the agates!”

- y/n cries while holding onto peridot

- she may be awkward, but she knew you were genuinely scared

- holds her slowly so she doesn’t flinch and let’s y/n cry

- “i’m sure that clod amethyst was just playing one of her pranks. she never does know when to stop. i mean, you know earth gems. they’re all so rowdy.”

- tries to console y/n as best she can

- “the pearl wouldn’t poof you. if anything she’d want to poof me. besides steven wouldn’t let that happen.”

- her awkward jokes and stiff touch kind of do cheer y/n up

- “why would amethyst say that though? that’s so mean!”

- “amethyst also eats dirt and old dumpster donuts. i wouldn’t worry about her too much. besides. us two are much more superior gems! she’s probably just jealous.”

- peri helps wipe her tears

- “y-yeah peridot. i guess you’re right.”

- “i’m always right!”

- 11/10 awkward but funny

[georgies-ftts]

my thoughts and opinions on this weeks episode as someone who didn’t have time to watch last weeks episode, has never watched live american telly before and has discovered a new found hatred for your adverts. Also i swear a lot.

let’s begin

(spoilers obviously don’t be a knob)

1. he cannae be captain he’s only got two stripes on his epilette why are we focusing so much on this man

2. Bobby eyeing up that gun I like that (the acting)

3. this guy is giving me uncanny valley and i don’t like it

4. hehe dongle

5. i mean fair enough… in and out just like he said

6. Hen love of my life where the hell have you been loca

7. “and you won’t be anymore either” that’s actually dead funny to me

8. husbands that saw together survive trauma together <3

9. “everyone survived” i know foreshadowing when i see it

10. there’s a lot of drunk driver hatred (as deserved) somethings gonna occurr

11. oh he’s dead… lol karma fuckhead

12. Hen, i love you but why can noone on telly give me actual realistic CPR… break them ribs girl

13. christ these american adverts are weird

14. let me tell you advertising prescription medicine isn’t actually a normal thing to do

15. I don’t know boss man am no a dr but that’s an awful lot of blood are you sure you should still be breathing????

16. “Are you happy” “Yeah, Yeah I am” i have a feeling that’s all about to change buddy

17. just me or can anyone else not see a fucking thing that’s going on this episode why’s everyone in the dark for?

18. moving on from that i love the lighting in the office scene… chefs kiss

19. EXCUSE ME SHE WAS DOING HER JOB, NEXT YOU’LL SUSPEND HER FOR CODLING THE DRUNK DRIVER AND GIVING HIM TEA AND CHEEK KISSES PISS OFFFFF

20. Why do American comm’s systems always fail whenever you actually need them

21. They were axed to pieces. I will let you off -_- this time…

22. “I didn’t shoot him” honestly… same i hope you get yer pay out boss

23. Athena please for the love of god pop a paracetamol or a codeine and chill the fuck out

24. cause it has never been hard enough for them you just had to add a bastard bomb

25. ITS BEEN 5 MINUTES WHY MORE ADVERTS

26. WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU ADVERTISING TO YOUR CITIZENS

27. The Rookie ad i love it carry on

28. If he wasn’t under the influence then he was just being a cunt and hen had every right to react as such thankyou very much

29. Oh my fuck what is happening - don’t tear them apart i’ll start crying

30. Bitch you’re taking on water stop being a pussy and help

31. “Don’t test me.” Queen, you rag his arse

32. “port stabilisers are gone” surely you should be tilting like a bitch right now or did i miss a frame

33. MORE FUCKING ADVERTS????

34. why’s that lizard from london?

35. WHY ARE YOU ADVERTISING DEMENTIA MEDICATION THAT IS LITERALLY ADVERTISED ALSO AS A DEATH PILL WHAT DO YOU MEAN COMA AND DEATH THATS NOT HELPING

36. “i didn’t save him either” he quite literally refused your help despite being detained

37. didn’t get that SS Menow reference… try the Mayflower next time

38. “Saving the ship” “course she is” GIVE THEM ONE MOMENT OF PEACE PLEASE I AM BEGGING YOU

39. okay good they are tilting like a bitch i will shut my mouth

40. NO STOP TILTING LIKE A BITCH I DONT CARE ABOUT REALISM I TAKE IT BACK NO

41. HOW MANY MORE ADVERTS DO YOU NEED

42. i don’t know but all your meds just seem to be doing the opposite of.. you know… keeping you alive.

43. woah therapy flash back get me one of those

44. you forgot to mention imminent death in your therapy session Mr Sir

45. “We did what we had to do” YOU’RE ALLOWED TO LIVE TOO.

46. “I couldn’t save my first family and I can’t save you either” and what if that was my last straw Robert Nash

47. ABC you can tone down the writing now i’m fucking sobbing

48. FUCK YOU AUSTRALIAN MAN I WAS CRYING MY EYES OUT

49. glad the us also have those Haribo ads

50. first time in my almost 20 years of life where i’ve seen an ADVERT for ANTIDEPRESSANTS that also actively make you MORE DEPRESSED

51. Hen i knew you were slaying you’ve never not slayed <3

52. no need for it was there mr boss man? no didn’t think so

53. You have no jurisdiction past the Gulf of Mexico??? ummmm??? distressed cruise ship full of your citizens???? idk??? do something????

54. oh. welp. no surviving that one, have fun with poseidon my loves

55. i don’t know about you but once i’ve been capsized like that in anything bigger than a kayak im giving up…

[dumb-zombie-girl]

Jake peralta x reader requests? Girl I have SO MANY ideas for this, like I daydream about that man basically 24/7 (it’s a problem 😅) anyways if it’s cool with you I’ll just list out a few thoughts and if anything gives you inspiration to write then please do! If not then no worries just lemme vent out all my silly romantic frustrations 😅 sorry this is long and btw anytime I say reader this goes for plus size reader or however you wanna write the reader, I’m a plus size girl myself but I don’t mind it’s up to you!

1, Jake & reader have a series of bets (sorry Amy, I’m taking your man & his games!) like reader bets Jake can’t go a week without sugar/coffee, Jake bets reader she can’t take something out of holts office without him noticing etc ect.

2, elevator make outs!! (This could build on the bets like in relationship Jake & reader have bets on how long they can kiss in the elevator without getting caught, or they have a no kissing rule at work that one of them breaks in the elevator!)

3, reader is a barista in a little cafe/bakery place and Jake comes in, she thinks he’s cute so she gives him a free pastry and flirting happens! This occurs over several weeks until reader gets in trouble with her boss and Jake overhears then offers to take reader on an actual dinner date to pay back all his freebie’s (and because he likes her obviously 😂)

4, reader teaches Jake how to cook, lots of mess & failed attempts happen but also it’s flirty & fun! Kitchen kisses 😘 (I am yearning!!)

5, reader is a prosecutor working a case with Jake, as they go over evidence they develop a mutual respect & attraction that ends up flirty & either Jake kisses reader for luck before she goes to court or after winning the case reader kisses Jake to celebrate!

6, reader is coming over to Jakes appartement for the first time and the squad makes him paranoid about her hating his messy place so he tries desperately to tidy up but struggles & gets stressed but when reader comes over early and sees him spiralling she settles him down and says she’s not bothered by his mess, she knows him and loves him regardless! Maybe also offers to help sort out a few things with him (*cough cough* mail tub)

7, reader is harassed/bullied on the street (or in another precinct as a new detective) and Jake sees & goes hard defending her! (I love it when jakes gets angry and protective)

8, insecure reader and/or insecure Jake. Both have a hard day and don’t feel great about themselves but when the other sees them upset they immediately go to cheer them up, showering them in love & compliments and they end up cuddling 🥰 ik this is vague but just comforting vibes are needed!

9, Mafia Jake.. does anything! I’m obsessed with him in this era and there is barely anything about him 😭 reader could be his fbi contact who helps him with his new role, or in adjusting back to normal life after the case is done (also in getting over Amy, sorry again girl but how tf could you let this man go?!) OR reader is in the Ianucci (idk how to spell 😅) family but wants out/isn’t a criminal and so Jake helps her, or is assigned by the family to protect her, or she’s a rival and Jake has to intimidate her but they end up flirting! Sorry that one has so many alternatives but my god the world needs more of mafia Jake!!

So sorry this is super long & weird 😅 I have more but didn’t wanna be extra annoying 😂 again feel free to do whatever you want with these prompts! Hope you have fun writing and much love to you 😊❤️

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE ASK. I think I'll work on one for right now but I'll also work on the others soon because all of these are so amazing

Also if you ever wanna talk about Jake I'm here I could always use a Jake/Brooklyn nine-nine friend

[watchfuldeer]

“in the alternate universe where eps 8-9-10 didn’t get rewritten”

Wait, rewritten how?? May I ask? Should I?

i wrote way too much sorry

they were rewritten to include shiv being pregnant, which hadn't been written into the season until that point. everything in 8-9-10 relating to shiv's pregnancy was an extremely hasty last minute addition, which is why it made no damn sense narratively when they dropped it into the beginning of 4.04, in a scene they filmed towards the end of shooting. every person who said in the interim between s3 and s4, shiv is not fucking pregnant, was in fact entirely correct, and they didn't plan to write it at all and it sticks out like a sore thumb in terms of succession's otherwise quite delicate plotting. which is especially disappointing given the huge payoff that paying close attention had during s3.

so, it scuppered their plot big time, but they just about clawed it together, if you ignore like. every emotional beat between episodes 1-7 lol. which is a real shame! i'm sure jesse had good intentions. but yeah, that's why they were rewritten. i think 8 and 10 weren't even rewritten to a substantial degree, but 9 is hanging by a thread in terms of cohesion - it's the only episode where they had any time to put 'oh shiv is also having a baby' scenes in, and reading the scripts it's just so clear that other stuff not only hit the cutting room floor but got swept away completely. connor is pretty much a non-entity after 4.08, for instance.

as for tom and greg (and shiv and matsson, and greg and matsson, and that whole mess of a love square) i think reading between the lines there are things missing. i can't say for sure what they were, but the script books were highly edited for publication, and no way is jesse ever going to personally give me a straight answer to the question 'what was shiv's actual arc in s4, before it became She Is Pregnant', or 'why did you prevaricate in the edit on tomgreg and tomshiv to the detriment of both, but mostly at the expense of tom, which felt really weird while watching the season because where the fuck did he go'. and yet, i think the denouement for both was really fucking good. stuck the landing despite taking a bizarre, last minute route there.

but yeah, if tom and greg did bang, it was 4.09. because the final scene for tom and shiv in 4.09 > first scene for tom and shiv in 4.10 makes very very little sense for either of them. it's like something else happened for tom at the end of 4.09 than what we saw. because the beginning of the finale he's with greg like yeah we're divorcing byeeeeee, and like wouldn't that have a lot more weight if he'd done anything other than be so eepy at logan's wake, while greg was crawling on his knees for tom to mencken and had that deleted scene with ewan. wouldn't greg almost betraying tom in the finale be higher stakes if they'd slept together, wouldn't it be more obvious and devastating that tom invites shiv into the car because she's suddenly more useful as his wife because of the decision she made at the vote... i simply think it would have been delicious.

huge caveat that this is just my thoughts. just my lil ol theories and thots. i read scripts and think about this stuff alot and have kept an eye on behind the scenes shenanigans. maybe shiv slept with matsson instead! maybe greg did! idk! but there are hanging threads that were snipped imo, rather than wonky plotting from the outset.

[solar-halos]

i watched speak no evil w my brother and now i need to talk about it. not to make this about race but something that jumped out to me was that this movie would only work with the whitest fucking family you’ve ever seen. let’s start at the beginning

1) we did get there late so idk what purpose dunking on danish ppl served so let’s just skip to the part where they let their twelve year old daughter ride a scooter with a man they JUST met. if some white middle age man offered to let let me ride saddleback on his motorcycle my parents (or at least my dad) would be like hell to the mf no and then we wouldn’t be allowed near him or his wife or his son ever again

2) speaking of his son that’s another reason why the movie would be over before it started. that’s prob more of an immigrant thing though (or like a machismo thing) bc i don’t think i’ve ever been allowed to play with boys no matter how old we were

3) okay actually my mom would have been a little fooled by that british accent

4) oh my god if we went over to this family’s house and the hosts were like “you’re sleeping in the same room as our son! :)” my parents (probably both of them) would be like hell to the MF NO. and then we’d drive back home and go no contact

5) the lack of backbone killed meee. if for some reason we weren’t gone by then you know what would have done the trick? some unfamiliar man being our fucking babysitter. my dad would be PISSED. my mom would be like “a brown man? girl…”

6) the husband telling everyone to swim in their underwear? girl…

7) i’m kinda forgetting the other details so im officially done dunking on white ppl. no offense to agnes bc she was distressed but feigning her period while she was bleeding in the front was like ..?

8) OH WAIT. back to dunking on white people bc if my parents (even my mom!) found me in some family’s BED holy shit. they would not careee about that lady’s sob story they’d escalate shit so much that the hosts would just kill them right then and there

9) also that stuffed animal agnes had was sweet and i love the lengths her parents went for her but my dad would be like get the fuck OVER it girl. and then if i tried kicking the backseat well. haha. let’s just say thqt wouldn’t end well

10) okay but also if i showed my mom those pics i dont think she’d believe me no matter how weird these people were LOL. like she’d still try to leave but i dont think she’ll be like “omg you’re right!”

11) the cheating beat was what rlly did it for me. like if that were my family the movie would be over before it even started. like i was confused why the wife kept saying her man was angry bc he never even yelled at her and the closest he ever came to lashing out at agnes was trying to get her to stop kicking his seat

12) he rlly was so in love with patrick though i thought there’d be at least one kiss between them

13) why did ppl (read: men) in the theatre start BELLY LAUGHING when patrick kept kissing the wife? gross

14) dude. if we didn’t manage to escape once (even tho we def would have… no way would either my parents drive back for a stuffed toy) my parents defintely would have kept driving even if patrick did push their son (who wasn’t rlly his son… but im gonna keep calling him that bc i don’t remember his name) into the lake. like for me my mindset for scenarios like that is “oh well u don’t rlly know how you’d react until it happens to u” but i know EXACTLY how my mom would have reacted. she would have kept driving

15) i do love the wife though. i feel like they were trying to make her annoying but we all need people like her. the food throwing scene was so upsetting (im a sensitive baby) and the husband not having a backbone drove me crazy. actually the husband was pretty much useless even before he broke his leg

16) i hate that uppity “im not gonna stoop down to their level” mentality. patrick literally said he was gonna take ur 12 yr old child as a child bride and u didn’t end it??

[louisisalarrie]

Louis didn’t write 2 of the 3 1D covers he’s singing so the argument that he wrote the songs therefore he’s proud to perform them falls through. Singing 1D songs is a given, but choosing to sing songs he didn’t write instead of his own songs that he has written (and are far better) is a weird choice and definitely suggests that he’s using 1D as a crutch. especially paired with his speeches implying he didn’t expect anyone to show up.

oooooo boy idk whether ur trying to antagonise me, but I’ll bite. I’m welcoming you to the show, but no backstage pass for you this time!

Out of the 1d covers Harry plays/has played, he wrote 3/4.

Out of the 1d covers Niall plays/has played, he wrote 3/5.

So the question begs to be asked… why doesn’t Harry play 3/4? IICF, Stockholm Syndrome, SOML… and then… why WMYB? That was 1d’s biggest hit! It was 13 years ago, get over it curly! Sureeeeely he doesn’t need to use that as a crutch right? Everyone knows that song, and he’s so famous! Why doesn’t he do Walking in the Wind? Or Olivia! He loves that song… right? Hmmm

And Niall? Fool’s Gold, SOML, Night Changes… not Drag Me Down, and Stockholm Syndrome!! They mean nothing to him and don’t show his talent because he didn’t write on them!!! Why doesn’t he do Don’t Forget Where You Belong? He has said how much that song means to him! Or maybe Never Enough? That would be fun!

So, clearly, both Niall and Louis love Drag Me Down. It could be because it topped the charts the second it was released and was a huge hit, which I’m sure might be a part of it, but it’s also a fun song. And they performed it over and over again on a world tour. And they were part of the band that released it. It’s not fucking rocket science, anon. Artist playing show = artist choosing songs they like.

I don’t fucking get why this is a debate. Yes, you could argue that it’s a little annoying that Louis has the most writing credits from 1d and chooses a couple of songs that he actually didn’t write on to perform. But like… I’m failing to see an issue here? What is ur exact problem with him not playing these covers, or do you just want him to remove himself entirely from 1d? The general population aren’t gonna connect louis to 1d if he sang something like Love You Goodbye or End of the Day. It would fail to actually do its job as a 1d cover. And in my opinion, it would be worse for him to perform a lesser known 1d song, rather than a huge hit.

I was in a band for like 6 years, and if I went on to perform in front of crowds again as a solo artist, I would 100% play a couple of songs out of our discography that I didn’t have a major hand in writing. Even in cities where we weren’t big and there was no reason to try and remind people of my previous band, I would do it because I love those songs and some of them mean a lot to me and some of them did well on radio and some of them are just fucking fun to play.

As for his speeches, idk how this directly correlates tbf lol. I’d argue that he had a really hard time solidifying his solo career, which many factors were outside of his control, and it’s emotional for him and still mind blowing that thousands upon thousands of people come out to see him like 8/9 years since 1d broke up. Niall cried on stage at MSG and always says how incredible it is that we support him and go and see him. And they would be in awe of the support because do you know how many bloody washed up nobody popstars have come out of bands that have broken up? Particularly extremely popular boybands? Where most of them don’t really make it AT ALL because either one of the members takes all the stardom (which was destiny for Harry because he was set up for it and there usually is always one they do set up for that), or just no one gives a fuck about them anymore?

The fact that 5/5 members still have a huge following and support and can continue to do what they love and tour - whether it be to stadiums or arenas - is huge. That doesn’t usually happen.

Louis doesnt name drop 1d every chance he’s getting. He’s not talking about them all the time, sharing 1d memories on socials etc., but it was a huge time in his life. It was 5 years and he was shot to the top immediately. It was huge for ALL of them. It’s a massive part of their career and point in their lives and it’s not just gonna be ignored?

I’ve seen artists, we all have, that have used their previous band fame as a crutch and it gives people the ick. It would annoy me, even though I’m an ot5 and was here for the entirety of 1d. But the reason it doesn’t annoy me is because he’s not saying it over and over again. He’s not rattling on about “the good old days” to get sympathy. I just… fucks sake.

Listen, I think a lot of these things people talk about when it comes to louis, subconsciously or not, come down to a comparison to Harry. Harry who has separated himself from the band so far due to having such a wider spread of fans and a team pushing for a solo career for him to “start fresh” since 2015. Harry who doesn’t follow any of the boys on Instagram and doesn’t like their posts or anything. Harry who has been incredibly successful on his own, almost immediately out of the gate with very little 1d reliance. Harry who has an entirely different team with an entirely different strategy and an entirely different image. Harry who famously posted a selfie in a 1d shirt. Harry who is currently off tour, and has been for like over a year, and completely MIA on socials, so he’s not giving us anything to talk about. These “fandom discussions” always happen when only one of them is on tour or there’s not much else going on. It’s so repetitive and frustrating.

Anyway, in an earlier post I talked about how the boys don’t owe us our dream setlist, and they can play whatever they wanna play. I’m not gonna link it, you can find it if you want to idc lol. And playing 1d covers is a great way to uphold a fan to artist relationship, it truly doesn’t matter which one of them wrote it. They play it, because we love it. And they wouldn’t play it if they didn’t love it and didn’t wanna be connected to 1d.

Christ, okay, I’m going to work and if anyone else comes into my inbox with things that you clearly already know I disagree with/have already talked about, I’m taking away your tickets and you will not get a full refund.

Anyway, thanks for the chat!

(Honourable mention to BSE, which both Niall and Harry have played (Harry’s wasn’t the whole song), which neither of them wrote on either.)

[snowyaika]

Say, can we get Agent Texas with prompt 9? Reader can be a freelancer if you want!

prompt: “what are you going to do, shoot me? do it.”

pairing: agent texas x gn!freelancer!reader

word count: 1.02k

warnings: season 10 spoilers, all lowercase, swearing, gun violence, south violence, reader is kind of pathetic, some angst, no use of y/n

notes: this is mostly crack, got more serious in the end though! this is more so just to help me get back into writing for rvb !!! sorry if it’s so rushed, there is literally no plot to this one. more coming soon!  🫀 

—

ever since becoming a freelancer, there are some things you’ve just come to never forget.

for starters, never offer to spar with carolina when she’s in a bad mood (or good, either way you get a free ticket to the infirmary).

don’t play along with wyoming’s knock-knock jokes, they’re never good and they just leave you questioning why you still speak with him.

drinking with york always ends up with you waking up to an empty wallet, especially when he and north team up on you.

and lastly, the most important of them all, the sound of kicking ass always means agent texas is nearby.

so when you hear the ship's alarm systems go off, tanks bombing the docks, and the gravity getting powered off? you wish you had york with you to make a bet that it was all because of her.

you had been on your day off when everything started going to shit.

heading to the training grounds (because apparently exercise helps when you’re out on missions) was when the alarms started to go off.

assuming it was the run of the mill invasion from some small organization that had issues with our immoral ways of life, you started to make your way to the shipping docks to make quick work of it, if carolina hadn’t already.

halfway, the ship's gravity goes haywire and you have to float your way there? okay, not as normal.

arriving to see tex absolutely rock a floating tank trying to kill her? what the fuck was going on?

not one to barge into conversations, you happily take your time making yourself known, instead staying at the sidelines watching while the poor tank gets thrown around like a ragdoll.

after witnessing the tank basically bomb itself, you finally decide to get involved (of course, only when you saw tex look your way).

“hey there,” you awkwardly wave, not quite sure how to deal with the raging man-eating woman in front of you. for starters, maybe get on your knees and beg for her not to kill you?

looking down at her gun, your mouth moves before your brain can even catch up, “what are you going to do, shoot me?”

“...”

it’s as if you can hear the confused face she’s making. you and tex never had any problems. sure, she’d kick your ass in training more than you could count, but there was no bad blood between the two of you.

sadly given the circumstances, and all the weird shit happening on the ship, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

“i’m not.. going to shoot you? you’re on my side.” her words sound like a question, like she can’t believe you had said something so stupid.

“oh… right.”

it’s almost as if you forgot the talk you, her and york had prior to this. about how the immoral things your group did was actually worse than you thought it was, and how you were planning to put an end to it all.

it’s not like you were in the wrong though, tex is scary when she fights (and maybe more attractive than you’d like to admit).

“dumbass,” she muttered under her breath as she put her gun back, walking over to you.

“where’s york?” you ask, not out of concern, but out of fear of being alone with tex for any moment longer than you need to be.

how would you know if she decided she didn’t like you anymore and cut off your head? put a bullet straight through your brain? push you against the wall and make out with you?

“making things harder than he needs to be.” as if on cue, the lights flicker and the ship jostles.

you let out a small gasp, stumbling towards tex and grabbing onto her wrist for support. her hand flies to your shoulder to stabilize you, and you can feel your body burn where her hand is.

“hey,” she whispers, her face (helmet?) leaning down to yours.

you gulp.

“y-yeah?” you clear your throat, breathless. oh my god ohmy god ohmygod. are we about to kiss?

“the gate is opening. more men are probably coming to stop us.”

oh.

you tilt your head to look behind her, and just like she said, the gate opens to reveal–

not men, south.

“son of a bitch,” you whisper, letting go of tex and standing straight, your hand hovering over your hollister in reflex.

south looks pissed, more than usual. you follow tex’s lead, walking side by side to confront the raging freelancer.

you notice too late that she has a fucking grenade launcher, and you’re sent flying as you try to dodge her oncoming attacks.

thank god, or maybe, thank north for stepping in at the time that he did.

once tex leaves, probably on her way to the director, things escalate. south goes batshit with the grenades, and north does his best to counter her.

not wanting to interrupt the family reunion (you really need to know what their family holidays were like), you decide to branch off to find york.

when you find maine making his way to where tex just left, you inwardly curse. of course you got stuck with the brute.

you don’t even bother putting up that much of a fight, knowing whatever you do is pointless and a waste of energy against someone like him. you’ve never won against him, so what’s this fight going to change? you figured that after he slammed you into the wall, nearly knocking you unconscious, he’d leave you alone to continue whatever he was set out to do.

no, life never worked out that way for you. when he ripped off your helmet, you had already accepted your fate. if the searing pain of your AI being taken from your nape wasn’t enough to make you want to die, him pulling out his gun and aiming it at your head did.

apparently, there is one thing you’ve forgotten since becoming a freelancer.

your love for allison, your will to live for her, will never amount to maine’s thirst for power.

—

[piratesexmachine420]

Okay I actually have one more thing to say about Minecraft and the Minecraft Movie. (Sorry, A Minecraft Movie.) I’m seeing a lot of people make the claim that “they whitewashed Steve” and while I absolutely see where they’re coming from, I disagree semantically. “Whitewashing”, to me anyway, implies that Steve was at one point intended to be nonwhite before then Mojang changed their minds. This is not the case. Notch intended Steve to be white.

Should he have been intended to be white? I’m not gonna interrogate that. Take it up with a sociology professor. Should we care if was intended to be white? Probably not, for most intents and purposes. In vacuo it’s very easy to read Steve as racially ambiguous, and that reading is all that really matters for most players. But that’s not been the case behind the curtain.

(Warning: long post, slightly messy post ahead. I could revise it further but I’ve spent way to much time on this. Maybe if I was arguing something a little less easy to take as racism. Sorry about that, BTW.)

Exhibit 1 (↓) : The current Steve skin.

This hasn’t always been the default player model. Obviously, right? Look at those rolled-up sleeves, those haven’t always been there!

This (↓) is the original.

It’s May, 2009; and this new game–not yet called Minecraft–is still a very pliable thing. No “Minecraft Bible”, no brand identity to uphold, no vision for the future. There are almost no features here–it’ll be another 9 months before the game’s trademark–infinite terrain–gets added on a whim.

Note the differences between this first model and the current one: the slightly lighter skin shades, the weird harsh edges on the detailing, the jarring lack of detailing on the pants, etc. etc. This is a placeholder: it’s been copied from another abandoned game prototype, where it had been copied from a second, unrelated, abandoned game prototype. Like so much of Minecraft’s early development, it’s been thrown together just to see if it’d work. It’s haphazard.

What would Steve look like if he’d been, well, designed? Created with intent? We actually don’t have to wonder. For a brief period of time between December 2009 and February 2010, Mojang had an artist: Hayden ’Dock’ Scott-Baron. Not just a programmer who happened to be making textures. And this (↓) is the design they came up with:

That’s a white guy. Notch got the chance to redesign Steve, to clarify what he intended, and he went with making Steve a white guy.

Well, to be fair, they also made “Black Steve”. (↓)

Yikes. “Black Steve”. I don’t know about you, but the fact that white Steve is just “Steve” and black Steve is “Black Steve” implies to me that this was a Mojang who thought of white as the default. Or at least that Notch thought of white as the default.

Dock would soon leave Mojang, and the game would never really get around to implementing any of his work. They stuck with Notch’s placeholder. And as the game got bigger and bigger, that placeholder became brand identity. By 2011 or 2012, Steve was too famous for them to go back and “correct” (and I mean that pejoratively) to white. (Not unlike creepers, but that’s another story)

And they’ve chafed under that ever since. Every depiction of Steve outside of the game itself has been obviously white, be it in promotional art, LEGO sets, the upcoming “film”, Super Smash Bros.–you name it, he’s white there. Mojang either hasn’t noticed or is unwilling to accept that anyone sees Steve any other way.

What should they do about this? Well, updating Steve to be unambiguously white in game would be pretty bad for what I hope are obvious reasons: bad optics, bad for their brand recognition, and really, really rude to anyone who didn’t think of him as white. They could also start depicting him accurate to his texture, but that might piss off racists. Pissing off racists is based, but you have to appeal to racists at least a little if you want to be the richest corporation in your market segment. They won’t go for that.

So what will they do? Nothing. Steve will continue to be an unambiguous white guy everywhere except Minecraft, where he’ll be treated like a white guy despite not exactly looking it. Is that whitewashing? I don’t think so. Whitewashing is deliberate, and this is a situation that’s evolved out of inertia more than anything else. But it isn’t much better than whitewashing.

[brokeitwiththepowerofmathamatics]

Fanfic - Desynced: Chapter 9

(Ao3 here) (ff.net here)

Danny marched up to the front door of his home. Sam and Tucker were nipping at his heels the entire way. He couldn’t wait until one of them got their driver’s license and they didn’t have to walk everywhere. Danny used to have a skateboard, but ever since the accident Danny hadn’t been comfortable riding on it.

He assumed that was a good decision, considering he had trouble with stairs now.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Sam begged, she alternated between reaching out as if to grab him, and chewing on her finger as they walked.

Danny chuckled. “Honestly? I’m actually feeling way better.” He reached for his pocket, his hand missing by a mile before he frowned. He bit his lip and closed his eyes in concentration, managing to get his hand into his pocket. He pulled out his house key and started trying to unlock the door.

He winced as he over corrected, and practically punched the doorknob with his extended fingers.

“You don’t seem fine,” Sam muttered. She glanced at Tucker for help, who threw his hands up in the air to signal that he had no clue what to say either.

“Well, okay,” Danny said, turning the key and opening the door. He turned and looked back at his two worried friends and sighed. He resisted the urge to run his hand down his face. With how he felt right now, he doubted he’d actually be able to do it correctly.

Instead, he looked up at the sky as he tried to think about what to say. “Yeah, no, I’m not fine.” he admitted, he knew he wasn’t. Something about him changed; something in a permanent way. He saw the way his friends’ faces fell and he scrambled to continue to explain. “It’s just the past several months I’ve been wondering what the hell has been going on with me, and I finally have an answer. It’s… it’s great. Really!”

“Dude…” Tucker said, standing outside the house even as Danny and Sam went in. “That… that looked like some kind of ghost form.” Danny froze in the doorway, and Sam winced and closed her eyes. “Ghosts are dead. Johnny is dead.”

Danny rubbed the back of his head, he tried to focus on the feeling of his fingers running through his hair and not the feeling of bone claws piercing his own neck. “Well, uh… the doctors and all looked me over, right? They didn’t think anything was weird, and I had a heartbeat and everything… A ghost wouldn’t have a heartbeat, right? Or want to eat?” Danny glanced over at Sam who was still standing there with her eyes closed, refusing to look at what was in front of her.

The three of them were silent for a minute, before Tucker asked. “That was months ago. And that one tried to eat Sam… You could have… Have you checked recently?”

“Do you check if you're alive?” Danny countered, but even to his own ears it sounded weak. Even so, he didn’t move to check.

Neither did Tucker.

“Can… can I?” Sam whispered.

“Sam?”

“I don’t… I…” Sam fumbled over her words. She reached up and wiped away a tear from her eye by pressing a finger against her eyeliner. “I don’t want to know. I don’t. But I need to. I need to know if I killed you.”

“You didn’t-”

“I pushed you. I wanted to know. You were always so secretive. It was a mystery. It was fun. When I’d mention something from one of my books and you’d always have a look on your face. It was like you knew more about what I was talking about than I did.” Sam sniffed and hugged herself. “If I hadn’t asked you about how you knew about all that, then this never would have happened. We’d be at school, right now, and Tucker would be eating his fourth crappy cheeseburger and our worst worry right now would be if Mr. Lancer was gonna give out another pop quiz.

“I… I might have gotten you killed, Danny,” Sam looked up at him. “So, I need to know. If…”

Danny let out a breath. “I… okay. Go ahead.” Danny held out a wrist, but Sam didn’t take it.

Instead, she slowly reached up, her fingertips extending just out of the baggy sweater she was wearing. Danny shivered as they made contact just under his jaw. He tilted his head to the side to give her better access to the artery running up his neck. Her fingers were warm, with her wearing the sweater he had assumed that she’d be cold. Instead her finger felt like they left a trail of fire along his skin, burning her touch into a memory he’d never forget. It felt like if he were to look at his neck right now, he’d see blisters along where she touched.

Her fingers pressed against his neck, and Danny sucked in a breath. He could imagine red hot coals under the pads of her fingers. He tried to focus on where she was touching him. He tried to see if he could feel a pulse as she pressed against him.

A sob broke through the house, and Sam threw herself into Danny’s chest. All her weight was against him, and it took some effort on Danny’s part to keep them both upright. But after the shock at her action wore off, Danny’s heart froze. That was assuming he had one to begin with at the moment.

“Is he…” Tucker asked.

Sam shook her head, burying her face into his shirt. “There’s a- there’s a- there’s a pulse!” She gasped. “You’re still alive.”

Danny reached up to pat her back, but as his hand made contact with her, she gasped and stepped back through his hand. Danny blinked and he realized that what was touching her wasn’t his flesh and blood hand, but the one of his ghost form.

“Sorry, I… I forget which is which sometimes.”

Sam shook her head. “It’s fine. It’s… it’s fine.” she reached up and grabbed his hand in hers. She slowly shifted it until not only could he feel the burning touch of her skin with his human hand, but he could feel his ghostly hand pressing into her back. “I… Thank you. For saving me. The other day and today…”

“What on earth are you three doing?” Danny and Sam jumped apart like they had been burnt, as Jazz walked into the hallway. “Close the door, the house is cold enough with us letting all the air out.”

“Jazz!” Danny shouted, as Tucker walked into the house and closed the door behind him. He coughed into his hand as Sam started working on getting her boots off. “I…” he trailed off as he noticed something, “Actually.. Where’s mom and dad? Or the agents for that matter? I just realized that they aren’t here…”

“They all left.” Jazz said, stepping around Sam and Danny and grabbing her own shoes. “I’m leaving too. One of the football players is paying me to tutor him, well his dad is anyway.”

“They left? Where’d they go?”

Jazz huffed. “I didn’t ask. Danny, I’ve managed to go sixteen years without getting involved in this magic stuff. I was very much looking forward to trying to become a brain surgeon and leaving magic behind, and now I have government agents carving the Seal of Solomon into our living room floor.” Jazz groaned and pulled at her hair. “I didn’t even know what the Seal of Solomon was until this week!” She sighed, and ran her fingers through her hair. She straightened her hair in silence as she continued explaining, “So as far as I’m concerned, our parents are just weirdos, and Sam is right that the government is wasting our taxpayer dollars.”

Sam folded her arms. “They are.”

“On that, we agree,” Jazz said, walking past Danny and Tucker. The three of them shuffled a bit as Tucker made room for Jazz to put her shoes on while he took his off. She stopped, made her back around and then dragged Danny’s head down to kiss the crown of his head. “Bye Danny, be safe. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“Ew… gross!” Danny groaned as Sam giggled. He rubbed the top of his head as if to wipe away cooties. Jazz went out the door and Danny sighed. “Well, I guess telling them their device worked is out of the question.”

Tucker pointed at the thermos. “Shouldn’t you drop it off somewhere? You know, in case it falls off and we got a ‘curse of the thirteen ghosts’ situation on our hands?”

Danny immediately turned toward the lab door. “You know what? Good idea.” Danny speed walked toward the lab door. He tried to open the door but when the door didn’t budge he groaned. “The door froze again.”

Sam walked over and grabbed one of several ice picks that had been left by the door for this purpose. “Lemme help.” Danny didn’t even get a chance to tell her to take it easy before she started chipping away at the frost that had sealed the door shut. Danny opened his mouth to tell her that they could just leave the thermos in the kitchen but he hesitated. Instead, he watched her. Seeing her attack the ice on the door like it was the source of all her problems filled him with some kind of determination.

He grabbed another ice pick and started working on the other side. Chipping at the frost that was growing along the cracks of the door. By the time Danny had managed to clear his side, Sam had managed to chip away the entirety of her’s, along with the top and bottom.

It wasn’t like Tucker wasn’t being helpful. He arguably took on the most important job; holding on to the thermos to make sure that Johnny didn’t accidentally get out.

Honestly, Tucker had the harder job. It might have been less physically demanding, but it was much more stressful.

Before long, they managed to open the door to the lab. When the door opened, air rushed into the lab as the temperature differences equalized. The warm air of the home rushed into the lab. Danny could hear pages from dozens of tomes rustle from the sudden influx of air.

Danny moved to step down the stairs, but when he pressed his foot into the ground, he suddenly dropped as the ghostly foot of his dropped down before his human leg met the ground. Sam reached out and grabbed Danny. “I got you,” she said. Danny smiled at her before the three of them made their way down the stairs.

There wasn’t much light down there. The only source of lumination came from something just beyond the sight of the stairs. The ethereal green glow only gave a small glimpse into the room The desks and bookshelves were set up against the wall. Each of them were totally covered in books and tomes that held down tarps that kept the various papers and notes in place.

When they got to the bottom, there was a moment of hesitation. A beat of silence, before a hand reached out and turned on the lights. “Oh come on!” Tucker shouted. “Dude, can’t you give a warning?”

“Sorry! Sorry!” Danny said, holding up his hands. “I thought with the portal…”

Sam grabbed Danny’s wrist and held on tightly. “Is that what it is? A portal?”

Danny nodded. “Yeah, it’s… well, it was meant to see into other worlds that we couldn’t see, right?” Danny lead them into the room. “It’s… well… Okay, I’ll admit, I’m not one hundred percent sure. The agents and my parents have been talking and the agents were calling it a gateway into an Elsewhere.”

“An Elsewhere? What the hell is that?” Tucker asked, stepping into the lab.

“Anywhere that’s not here, really.” Danny said with a shrug. He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Like I said, it’s not like I know what I’m talking about… I’m just repeating the bits and pieces that my parents were talking about at the breakfast table. But… from what I got, it’s a catch all term for alternate dimensions, or a different phase of ours. I’m guessing this one is a different alternate dimension ‘cause they named it.” Danny walked in front of the portal, and really looked at it. He hadn’t stepped down here since the accident, although he knew everything that happened down here since then.

He couldn’t tell you how he knew, but he knew. From everything his parents threw at the portal to try and destabilize it, to everything they took from it to try and understand it.

There was a thrum, a heavy pulse that vibrated deep in everyone’s bones. The air was cold, every other breath was visible. If you asked Tucker, he’d have said the air was thick with ozone, if you asked Sam, she’d have said someone had burned too much incense. If you asked Danny, he’d have told you the air felt like it had weight.

The large opening that Danny had once stood in was now filled, it looked like green waters, swirling in the upright contraption. it towered over them, the waters inside the gaping maw cast a green light over all of them.

But worst of all, was the quiet singing that they all heard, though they all silently agreed not to ever mention.

Tucker huffed and put the thermos in the middle of several tomes on one of the desks. “You gonna tell us what they called it?”

“No,” Danny scoffed, “‘cause it’s stupid.”

“It can’t be that stupid,” Sam said, stepping around Danny, keeping herself between him and the portal.

“They’re calling it the…” Danny froze as a stray thought jolted through him. He straightened up, before turning toward the portal. “The… Ghost… Zone…”

Sam and Tucker turned toward Danny. “Danny?” Sam called out, as she reached for him. “What’s wrong?”

“Johnny said he couldn’t reach his girlfriend…” He began slowly. Thoughts were slotting into place, and a puzzle he hadn’t even been thinking about began to get put together. “And that the feds were keeping him from her.”

“Uh… yeah?” Tucker began. “We were there.”

“Johnny didn’t go… uh… feral? At first?” Danny explained, waving his arm about as if he could gesture to the man next to him. “Like, I think he was trying to get to his girlfriend, and that was the problem. He couldn’t. Because my parents placed wards in the house to keep things out.” He paused and chewed his lip. “I don’t think Johnny was lying about anything he said, it was just a matter of perspective…”

Tucker sucked in a deep breath. “Please. Please, please, please tell me you aren’t about to do what I think you are.”

“I think he wanted to be here, like, in front of this portal.”

“God damn it.”

Sam grabbed the back of Danny’s shirt. “Danny… this doesn’t sound like a good idea.”

“The agents said when a ghost goes monstrous like that, there’s no going back. Like, they become wild animals.”

Tucker took a step towards the stairs. “That isn’t making me feel any better, dude.”

“But I did when you guys were safe again,” Danny continued picking up the thermos. He looked at both of his friends and took a deep breath. “Can you guys trust me?”

“Always,” Sam said immediately. She glanced back at Tucker who was looking between them and the stairs.

Tucker sighed. “I reserve the right to bravely run away and tell your family what happened.”

“Fair,” Danny said, popping off the top of the thermos. He pointed it at the ground. He ran his hand around the outside of the device and commented, “My parents probably made some way of depositing anything they found. Though I don’t know if-”

Danny was cut off when suddenly a strong wind kicked up coming from the thermos. With a loud crashing of metal and breaking glass, the feral form of Johnny came tumbling out of the thermos, shortly followed by the smog that had also attacked them. The smog recovered first, turning to face the three of them. It rushed toward Danny, its screeches shaking not just the mortals in the lab, but the very foundations of the house.

Three feet away from Danny, it stopped suddenly. Falling flat on the ground like someone had yanked the floor out from underneath it. It whirled around to look at Johnny.

Johnny was holding up one hand palm facing outward and fingers raised to the sky, asking the smog to stop. He himself was facing the glowing green surface of the portal. The shadow underneath him was thin, and reddish, like rust or blood. It stretched out from underneath him, leading right into the portal.

The surface of the waters began to ripple then bubble as something began to breach. Johnny took several steps towards it, before something burst out. It was humanoid, and vaguely feminine, based off what clothing remained on it.

While a quarter of one leg still had fishnets on, the rest of the limbs had been completely destroyed. One foot still had a black high heeled shoe on it, but the other limb was nothing but burnt and melted flesh. One arm was barely still attached, with just a few ligaments holding it to an empty shoulder socket. The other arm was mostly metal, with a large hand that had a shard of metal coming out of the back of it.

Meanwhile at the waist of the new ghost, an exhaust pipe stretched out, and a sleeve of meat flowed out of it, shiny and wet with a fluid that Danny wasn’t sure what it would be called. Part of her chest had been completely torn away, leaving a headlight coming out of her body, with broken bones encircling it.

She screeched, letting out a sound of metal scraping metal and the sound of tires squealing. Her giant and destroyed hands went to her head and covered her face. Johnny rushed forward, letting out the same kind of calls. He pulled her hands gently away from her face, and his melted face morphed into the best approximation of a smile it could possibly give.

The ghostly woman blinked – less the closing of eyelids and a dimming of the light behind empty eye sockets – before she threw her arms around Johnny.

Almost immediately, their mutilated forms began to change. Johnny returned to the biker look that Danny had originally known him as, and the woman began to change as well. Her feet gained leather heeled boots. Slowly a jacket formed around her shoulders and covered up the damage to her chest, as her flesh began to reform a black crop top.

She shook her head, and a set of dreads formed while her organs returned back into her body. She looked at Danny and the others and gave them a wide smile. “Thank you. I hope my idiot of a boyfriend didn’t give you too much trouble?”

Johnny pressed a hand to his chest and leaned back, even as he pulled her closer. “Aw, come on babe, you think I-”

“He turned into a feral monster and attacked all of us,” Sam interrupted.

The woman turned and slapped his chest. “Johnny!”

“Aw, come on, babe! You know how it is!” The woman sighed and placed her head against his chest. “You know how it is…” he repeated again, this time more quietly.

“Yeah… Yeah, I do.”

Johnny looked over her head and at Danny. “Thank man, I… I really owe you.”

Danny nodded, glancing at the others. He hadn’t quite thought this far ahead. Sam stepped forward. “I… I have a question. And, I know this might seem insensitive. But you two are…”

“Dead?” Johnny finished for her. “As doornails…”

Sam nodded. “Do… do you have heart beats? Like this?’

“No.” The woman said, turning her head to look at Sam, not even letting an inch of her move away from Johnny if possible. “I don’t know of any ghost that does.”

Johnny patted her on the back. “I mean, not like we know many… I think I count three? Right, Kitty? Em, Boxy, Skulker…”

Kitty hummed. “I suppose that’s it isn’t it?”

“Is Em that meat blob that’s been running around?” Tucker asked. “I think I can guess who Boxy is.”

“Yeah, I don’t think he even remembers how to say anything other than box,” Johnny said as he ran his hand up and down Kitty’s back.”But yeah, good point, that’s four. The old Lunch Lady.”

“Lunch Lady?” Danny repeated, looking at Sam and Tucker.

Johnny shrugged. “Yeah, I don’t know exactly what her deal is. But like… that’s the feeling I get from her. I just see her and think, ‘She’s a lunch lady.’”

Danny leaned forward. “Do you know what’s making her feral? Like…” Danny said, waving at both of them. “Ya know?”

Johnny shook his head. “Nah, I don’t. I haven’t interacted with her much. I just know she just keeps going back to Casper High.”

Kitty frowned. “Ugh, poor lady.”

“It’s worse than you think, Kitten, that school sucks more than ours did..”

Sam scoffed. “I’d believe that…”

“Wait…” Danny interrupted. “Keep going back? I thought she was trapped there.”

Johnny scoffed. “Nah, we aren’t trapped where we die. It’s just… comforting to go back there. If that was the case, we’d still be in Seattle.” Johnny shrugged. Johnny shoved a thumb back at the portal. “It’s just easier to find each other with things like this. Like, Hell is a pretty large place you know?”

The mortals all paled as one. “That’s a portal to Hell?” Tucker muttered aloud.

“Probably,” Kitty said, shrugging. “Sure feels like it.” She turned and slapped Johnny on his chest. “And you left me in there!”

Johnny pulled her tightly into a hug, she gasped as he crushed the air out of her. “I know, babe, I’m sorry. Believe me, I tried to get back… I… I saw an escape, and I wanted to scout it, but it closed behind me.”

Kitty sighed and pushed herself away from Johnny. She reached up and pulled Johnny’s head down and pulled him down into a kiss. She bit at his lip and pulled away and breathed for a moment. “I don’t blame you. That place is…” She shivered, and began to cry.

Danny opened his mouth to ask another question, but Kitty reached up and placed a kiss on Johnny’s cheek. “Babe, can we go? It’s… it’s been a long time.”

“That it has, babe, that it has,” Johnny said. He turned and looked at the smog that was still floating in the air. “Come on, Shadow, we gotta show a lady a good time.”

Shadow quite obviously rolled its eyes, but threw itself into the ground, before melting itself into the shadow the two of them cast. Johnny gave Danny a salute. “Thanks man, I know I lost it at the end there but… thanks for pulling me back.”

And then they were gone. Like they had never really been there.

Tucker let out a slow breath. “Wow, okay, so uh… that worked out really well. We’re not gonna do anything like that again, right?” He turned and saw the look Danny was giving Sam, and though he couldn’t see Sam, he knew she was returning that look. “We aren’t doing anything like that again, right?”

[wouldntyou-liketoknow]

Day 9: Plants

(Disclaimer: only one of the characters in this story belongs to me. If you’d like to learn more about LevianthanPat, go here. This story is actually something of a sequel to the first time I wrote about him and EldritchPlier, who belongs to the Markiplier Cinematic Universe. CryptidXian is yet another one of the LxianEgos made by @sammys-magical-au; go here to learn more about him.)

(Trigger Warnings: body horror, implied sleep problems, implied nightmares/night-terrors, gore, blood, organs, body horror, strong language. Please let me know if I missed anything.)

(If you’d like to use distorted fonts like the one you’ll be seeing in this story, then I recommend going to FancyTextGenerator.)

Day 1 Day 2 Day 3   Day 4 Day 5 Day 6 Day 7 Day 8 Day 10 Day 11 Day 12 Day 13

It feels like only a moment or two has passed since you closed your eyes for the night. 

Now you’re reopening them and finding yourself in something that is most certainly not your bed. Most other people would probably panic in this situation, but you don’t. You know you don’t have to.

For one thing, whatever you’re lying in isn’t a bathtub full of ice, either. ‘Matter of fact, as you push yourself to sit up, a decent amount of leaves fall away from your face to join the rest in the pile around you. They all come in lovely shades of red and orange and yellow; it makes sense, considering the state of the trees outside your apartment. 

For another thing, you can’t feel the leaves as you brush them away from your clothes. It’s not that your skin is numb—everything within touching distance just doesn’t have the texture it should have. The leaves don’t crunch or crackle under your weight (very unsatisfying, I know).  

You’ve learned to recognize this hazy, near-weightless sensation. 

You’re asleep right now. You’re dreaming. 

And you have enough experience to brace yourself right now. You may not know how or when it’ll happen, but you absolutely know that there’s going to be a twist here.

Hundreds of years of scientific progress have already passed. Research has grown, numerous experiments have been documented, and people can still only throw their best guesses at the concepts of sleep and all its weirdness.

You doubt humanity will ever be able to fully understand sleep. 

A bit of a pessimistic outlook, yes, but you have every single damn right to be a pessimist. 

It’s been months since the constant stream of nightmares started plaguing you. 

Ten months, to be specific. 

Ten. Whole. Months. Of having a raging dumpster fire for a sleep-schedule. 

(To be fair, you’d be lying if you said you weren’t a bit relieved that the nightmares didn’t finally end at nine months. Because timing like that would’ve just been begging fate to open a whole new horrific can of worms for you. . .)

Sure, this has paved the way for you to become a somewhat lucid dreamer, but that’s not really a silver lining. Just because you’re aware of when you’re dreaming doesn’t necessarily mean you have any more power in aforementioned dreams than you did before. 

You’d think that, at this point, you would’ve been able to adjust the nightmares. 

You’re sure that you could’ve adjusted to them, but you cAN’T, BECAUSE THE DAMN NIGHTMARES ARE ONLY HALF OF YOUR PROBLEM!

You heave a sigh, dragging your dream-hand down the side of your dream-face. It feels like how the plume of smoke rising from a freshly-ignited scented candle looks.

Yeah, the impending scenario is going to suck, but there’s no point standing here and getting yourself worked up over it. In fact, that’ll probably just make things even worse whenever they do decide to happen.

Might as well just take it in stride. 

You pick yourself up, pulling a dream-leaf from your hair and letting it flutter down to the ground, which is blanketed by long, unkempt grass. Turning around in a small circle, you realize that you’re in the middle of. . .some kind of garden? There’s a decent amount of trees surrounding you, all at varying distances from one another, but it seems only one of them has actually shifted colors and shed its leaves. 

All the rest are in full bloom, their branches covered in flowers. You can recognize a crabapple here, a cherry blossom there, a few different Cape Myrtles. The explosions of color are so pretty that it takes you a few seconds to realize how the trees are twitching. Not swaying like they would in the wind—there’s no trace of a breeze around you. Twitching. Like wayward muscles in a person’s arms or legs.  

You chew your lip, making a note to not get too close as you start walking. The grass almost feels like water around your ankles. It’s not wet (thank God, because having to deal with wet socks on top of a nightmare would just be needlessly cruel); it just seems to have the same weight as a creek or a pond. 

You keep your head on a swivel, miraculously alert and aware for a sleeping person. You know there’s really no point, but you’d still rather at least see the danger coming than be caught off-guard. So, of course it doesn’t take too long for you to discover the patches of flowers that are growing around the bases of the spastic trees. It takes even less time for you to realize how the aforementioned patches apparently go on as far as the eye can see. Sure, there’s enough space for you to wander without accidentally harming any of the flora, but they’re still pretty much everywhere. 

It makes you think of anatomy textbooks, of their chapters on the circulatory system, to be exact. The grass-pathways can be compared veins, which would leave the flower patches and trees in the roles of larger organs. 

Logically speaking, wouldn’t that make you a germ? A foreign, invading virus?

You’re not sure, but that doesn’t mean you want to find out.

Even with your paranoia, you just can’t help but pause to kneel down and get a closer look at the flowers. You immediately have to rethink that choice when several stems all pivot in place in order for their blossoms to look back at you. 

A mix of roses and peonies, each one coming in either a dark or pastel hue. They’re all gorgeous. The slick, rolling eyeballs in the centers where the pollen should be. . .well, they come in different colors too, along with different pupil-shapes. Some of them are welling up with tears, which drip out between the petals and plop down into the soil. 

You have to swallow a lump in your throat, but at the same time, you don’t think the eyes make their flowers look bad. Just a little strange. It could be worse: they could be shooting lasers in your face.

For whatever reason, you offer a polite nod to the flowers before standing back up and continuing your stroll. Even as you move farther and farther away, you can’t stop feeling all those little eyes on you.

You’re casting a shadow—all of the plants are as well—but it’s dim and flickering. You can see everything just fine, but the light beaming down on this environment is dull. That doesn’t take away from all the colors, but it still makes you feel like there’s a thin dusting of tarnished brass over everything. 

You look up, craning your neck. 

The sky is completely and utterly filled with clouds. Rather than white, they’re a mixture of gray and a deep shade of mottled yellow, along with a tint of otherworldly blue around the edges. They really do look just like clouds always seem to look in abstract painting: a bit jagged around the edges, still and purposefully layered. You can’t see any trace of the sun (if there even is a sun in this dream). 

You keep glancing down at all the flowers you pass. Plenty of them have teeth lining their petals, along with little tongues that waggle up at you without making a sound and uvulas in the place of their stigmas or styles or whatevers. (None of these ones burst into song, to your slight disappointment.) 

A number of the flowers actually appear normal, if not simply weird-looking all on their own with no help from ever-shifting dream rules. Orchids of the bat, monkey-faced, naked-man, et cetera variety. A plethora of chimeras, pitcher plants, voodoo lilies, sundew, swaddled babies, dancing girls, baneberries. . .Hell, you even come across a few classics: sunflowers, tulips, sweet williams. 

But they all seem to have a sort of. . .fleshy aura. Like they’re bound to become abnormal one way or another and you’ve just so happened to catch them before the changeover. You don’t know how to make sense of them. 

Sooner or later, you come across a hill. It’s a small one, but standing on it can offer a good view of all the other flora around here. It’s also topped with one tree, keeping it  sequestered from all the others. You move slowly, carefully, squinting up at this particular tree. Once you’ve scaled the hill, you realize that it isn’t twitching at all. It’s standing perfectly still, like a normal tree should. Curious, you begin to pace around it. 

Your instincts tell you there are trees just like this in the real world, but you’re still positive that you’ve never actually seen one. It seems to be about thirteen feet tall, covered in reddish-brown bark. Oblong, glossy green leaves adorn its branches, many of which end in little clusters of hanging fruit. The berries are a cheerful color, soft orange enveloped by red, perfectly spherical with rough-yet-fuzzy-looking surfaces. They look a bit similar to strawberries, but you predict they’d taste a little more tart. A mild, sweet scent is wafting off of it from all angles. 

While it doesn’t have an entire patch of smaller plants to loom over, there’s still a generous amount of black flowers growing close to its trunk. You rack your brain as they stare at them. Morning glories? Hibiscus? No. . .hollyhocks. 

You’re so proud of your memory that it takes an embarrassingly long few seconds for you to notice movement between the flowers’ stems. (It’s honestly kind of hilarious, considering how you’ve been bracing yourself for whatever is going to make this dream into a nightmare.)

But then, out of the corner of your eye like The Shining, you see a gnarled, pale hand rise from the ground.

You freeze in place. A prickly sensation crawls along your spine. 

As you watch, the hand is lifted higher and higher into the air on an unnecessarily long arm. There seems to be an elbow-esque joint every twelve inches. By the time it could easily tap you on the nose, the hand dips back down, causing the rest of the limb to arc with a series of pops and clicks. The hand hovers by one of the hollyhock blossoms. A few bony fingers reach for those dark petals; sharp nails protrude from the cuticles, but they don’t tear into the flowers. No, they’re just. . .gently probing them. Almost like a curious toddler would. 

That allegory dies a quick death as the long, low creeeaaak of a tree branch breaks the silence, as you look back up to find a ghoulish face, angled upside-down, mere inches from yours. With nostrils ever-so-slightly flaring like a raccoon and dead, milky-white eyes drilling into yours, the creature announces, “฿ØØ.”

You don’t scream, but a high-pitched, unintelligible noise still escapes your lips as you reel back. You trip over your own feet, feeling as though a bucket of icy water has been dumped over your head as you collapse onto the grass. 

The creature snickers at your shock. As it turns its head rightside-up, bangs of black hair fall into place just above its eyes, matching the stubble growing along its jaw and above its lips. Its head ever-so-slightly pushes toward you. This helps you discover how its neck looks a lot like that arm protruding from the hollyhocks. The only difference is that it’s even longer. As you get to your feet and back away, you see how the creature’s neck is poking out from behind the fruit tree.

That’s. . .not possible. 

The tree’s trunk is thin enough to wrap your arms around. There’s no way it can actually be hiding the rest of this entity’s body.

And yet, that’s exactly what it’s doing. (Or maybe this creature just doesn’t have a torso? Who’s to say? Not you, that’s for sure.)

“₳Ⱨ, ₮ⱧɆ ØⱠĐ Ø₦Ɇ-₮₩Ø ₱Ʉ₦₵Ⱨ ₮₳₵₮ł₵,” Mr. Nightmare-Humanoid-Giraffe proclaims, speaking in what you believe to be a thick Portuguese accent. “ł₮'₴ ₳Ⱡ₩₳Ɏ₴ ₣Ʉ₦₦Ɏ.”

“. . .W-where the hell did you come from?” You blurt. You know that’s not the nicest thing to say right after meeting someone, but Mr. Nightmare-Humanoid-Giraffe literally started this off with a jumpscare. 

“₮ⱤɄ₴₮ ₥Ɇ, ɎØɄ ĐØ₦'₮ ₩₳₦₮ ₮Ø ₭₦Ø₩. ɆVɆ₦ ł₣ ₮ⱧɆ ₴₮ØⱤɎ ₩₳₴₦'₮ ₩₳₳₳₳₳₳Ɏ ₮ØØ ⱠØ₦₲, ⱧɆ₳Ɽł₦₲ ł₮ ₩ØɄⱠĐ ₴₮łⱠⱠ ₱ⱤØ฿₳฿ⱠɎ ₥₳₭Ɇ ₮ⱧɆ ł₥₱ØⱤ₮₳₦₮ ₱₳Ɽ₮₴ Ø₣ ɎØɄⱤ ฿Ɽ₳ł₦ ₥ɆⱠ₮.” Mr. Nightmare-Humanoid-Giraffe raises an eyebrow. “₦Ø₩ ₮Ⱨ₳₮ ł ₮Ⱨł₦₭ Ø₣ ł₮. . .ł ₵ØɄⱠĐ ₱ⱤØ฿₳฿ⱠɎ ₳₴₭ ɎØɄ ₮ⱧɆ ₴₳₥Ɇ QɄɆ₴₮łØ₦.”

The way your stomach sinks feels even worse that it would in the real world. 

You realize far too late that this entity isn’t just a product of your brain. He’s not just another nightmare. 

He’s a sentient being. He’s in a weight class of his own. 

And the fact that something like him is interacting with you while you’re dreaming does not bode well.

“I don’t want any trouble,” you insist, holding up your hands defensively. “I’m literally asleep right now. If I’m trespassing—or if I did anything to disturb you, I-I swear I didn’t mean to.”

The closest section of Mr. Nightmare-Humanoid-Giraffe’s neck is pushed upwards, folding horizontally. Two joints bend by either side of his head, pointed toward the sky. It’s only when the arm extends further from the hollyhocks, along with a second arm that stretches around from somewhere just out of eyeshot, and glides closer to him, hands spreading in a lame gesture that you realize he’s simply shrugging without shoulders. “₮ⱧɆⱤɆ'₴ ₦Ø ₮ⱤØɄ฿ⱠɆ. ł ₲ɄɆ₴₴ ł ₴ⱧØɄⱠĐ'VɆ ₭₦Ø₩₦ ɎØɄ'Đ ₣ł₦Đ ɎØɄⱤ ₩₳Ɏ ⱧɆⱤɆ ₴ØØ₦ɆⱤ ØⱤ Ⱡ₳₮ɆⱤ.”

“. . .What?” Somehow, you’re caught even more off-guard than you already were. “What do you mean by that?”

“ØⱧ, ₵Ø₥Ɇ Ø₦. ɎØɄ ₭₦Ø₩ ₩Ⱨ₳₮ ł ₥Ɇ₳₦,” Mr. Nightmare-Humanoid-Giraffe chuckles, lightly shaking his head. Even with the total lack of irises and pupils, he’s still able to give you the classic Seriously? look. “ł'₥ ₦Ø₮ ₮ⱧɆ ₣łⱤ₴₮ ₥Ø₦₴₮ɆⱤ ɎØɄ'VɆ ₥Ɇ₮. ₳₦Đ ł ₩Ø₦'₮ ฿Ɇ ₮ⱧɆ Ⱡ₳₴₮, Ɇł₮ⱧɆⱤ.”

You can practically feel the color drain from your face. You don’t try to stop yourself from nodding. You’ve been taking sleeping medication, practicing healthy bedtime rituals, yadda-yadda-yadda. 

And even if that stuff has been helping a little, it’s still pretty damn useless in the face of certain things.

Two things, to be precise. And they both start with P. (Well, as far as you know. You haven’t been able to learn their full names; apparently because you need multiple forked tongues for correct pronunciation. You’re still not sure why either of them bothered sharing this information, since you don’t exactly have faces to put those partial names to.) 

Mr. Nightmare-Humanoid-Giraffe watches you think, his face-splitting grin becoming thoughtful. He tilts his head to the side, edging just a little closer to you. The way his neck contorts through the air almost reminds you of a caterpillar climbing a tree. 

“How do you know about that?” You wonder aloud. You’ve learned that it’s pretty common for creatures like him to just know many things without actually having the means to, but you’re still curious. Besides, if he’s content with just chatting, then maybe he’ll stay that way until you’re able to finally wake up. 

“฿Ɇ₵₳Ʉ₴Ɇ ł'VɆ ₴ɆɆ₦ ł₮,” he answers. “₴Ⱨ₳ĐØ₩₴ ₥₳₭Ɇ ₱ⱤɆ₮₮Ɏ ₲ØØĐ ₲₳₮Ɇ₩₳Ɏ₴ ł₣ ł ĐØ ₴₳Ɏ ₴Ø ₥Ɏ₴ɆⱠ₣. Ɇ₴₱Ɇ₵ł₳ⱠⱠɎ ₩ⱧɆ₦ ₮ⱧɆɎ'ⱤɆ ฿Ɇł₦₲ ₵₳₴₮ ฿Ɏ ₣ⱠØ₩ɆⱤ₴.”

Your train of thought screeches its way into a collision. “Wait—so. . .so, you’ve been in my room before?”

“ɎɆ₳Ⱨ, ₳ ₣Ɇ₩ ₮ł₥Ɇ₴. Ø₦₵Ɇ ₩ⱧɆ₦ ɎØɄ ₩ɆⱤɆ ₳Ⱡ₴ɆɆ₱, ₮₩ł₵Ɇ ₩ⱧɆ₦ ɎØɄ ₩ɆⱤɆ JɄ₴₮ ØɄ₮ Ø₣ ₮ⱧɆ ₳₱₳Ɽ₮₥Ɇ₦₮,” he replies, very much unbothered by the way your jaw drops. 

You blink. You blink again. You begin to pace around in a small circle, hands subconsciously rising to grasp at your head like it might fall off. 

Memories of previous nights barge their way between your ears. The red light outlining your bedroom door from the other side. . .the pair of glowing eyes on the rippling figure looming against the glass of your window. . .their respective, concerning-yet-oddly-personable voices calling out to you, going back and forth between squabbling with each other and trying to convince you to let one of them inside. . .

“Do you know them?” You finally ask. You’re not sure where that question came from, but it feels like it could be important. 

For the very first time since you saw him, Mr. Nightmare-Humanoid-Giraffe’s smile fades. He clicks his tongue and chews his lip.“ɎɆ₴, Ʉ₦₣ØⱤɆ₮Ʉ₦₳₮ɆⱠɎ.”

Your nights of being a literal captive audience for Plier and Pat’s disputes have been terrifying enough. You never would’ve guessed that the one classic vampire rule could apply to outer abominations, but you damn well haven’t forgotten to thank your lucky stars for it. 

. . .Except now you’ve just learned that apparently not all surreal horrors have those limitations and you’re talking to one that’s pretty much had access to more than enough blackmail material and if he’s been able to do that then how many others have been sneaking in while you’re unaware and—

“ɎØɄ Ⱨ₳VɆ ₲ØØĐ ₮₳₴₮Ɇ ł₦ ₣ⱠØ₩ɆⱤ₴, ฿Ɏ ₮ⱧɆ ₩₳Ɏ,” Mr. Nightmare-Humanoid-Giraffe mentions. His seemingly-unconnected arms draw closer to each other, folding across his che—uh, neck. The left hand’s palm supports the elbow of the right arm as its hand idly grasps his lower jaw. “ł ₮ØØ₭ ₴Ø₥Ɇ ₵Ⱡł₱₱ł₦₲₴ ₣ⱤØ₥ ₮ⱧɆ ₱Ø₮₴ Ø₦ ɎØɄⱤ ĐɆ₴₭. ₳ⱠØɆ VɆⱤ₳, ₲₳ⱤĐɆ₦ł₳, ₳₦Đ J₳₴₥ł₦Ɇ, Ɽł₲Ⱨ₮?”

You’re snapped out of the near anxiety-attack in a way similar to a rubber band breaking. 

“Um. . .yeah, that’s right,” you cough, thinking of the three green friends you recently purchased from that nursery downtown. You’ve personally named them Sonny, Cher, and Yasmin, but that information doesn’t really seem relevant right now. Besides, there’s a good chance the monster already knows that.

Mr. Nightmare-Humanoid-Giraffe nods, and his grin reappears so quickly, like it never left his face to begin with. Despite his unsettling demeanor, you can still detect some genuine gratitude. “ł'VɆ ฿ɆɆ₦ ₥Ɇ₳₦ł₦₲ ₮Ø ₳ĐĐ ₮ⱧØ₴Ɇ ₮Ø ₥Ɏ ₵ØⱠⱠɆ₵₮łØ₦ ₣ØⱤ ₳ ₩ⱧłⱠɆ ₦Ø₩.”

You nod back, mind momentarily going blank. You’ve learned that there’s a slew of unsavory truths behind even the most unassuming things, but this guy’s apparent fondness for horticulture doesn’t seem too nefarious. (Read: seem. You still need to stay on your toes.)

About thirty seconds of painful awkwardness pass the two of you by.

Mr. Nightmare-Humanoid-Giraffe lowers one arm in order to drum his nails on the fruit tree’s trunk. 

You rock back and forth on your heels, biting at the inside of your cheek. And right as you have an idea of what to say next, a long, low, gurgling sound breaks the strange silence. Several more join it.

You and Mr. Nightmare-Humanoid-Giraffe glance down just in time to see how the black hollyhocks are trembling. The nearest one leans forward, with a round lump in its stem that definitely wasn't there a few minutes ago. You watch with confusion and mild dread as the lump works its way up, pushing at the plant’s green skin from the inside. Then, once the lump settles at the part where the petals all gather at the base of the flower’s head. . .it retches like a drunk college student on helium. 

The hollyhock angles its blossom downward, and to the tune of a long, sickening sssqqquiii-plop! a slimy heart is pitched out, landing on the grass with a solid splat. Strands of blood cling to the black petals. The bloom quivers in a way that almost looks like heavy breathing.

A small scream tears through your throat as you stagger back, unable to take your eyes off of the new mess.

. . .Well, that last part changes once all the other hollyhocks start spitting out a variety of wet organs, the blood threatening to spray on your clothes. You know it’s just dream-blood, and you know you’re just wearing dream-clothes. But you also know that there will always, always be unpleasant side-effects to touching blood that’s just leaked out of something it shouldn’t possibly be leaking out of in the first place. 

You clamp a hand over your mouth; the wave of nausea that rolls over you feels itchy and sweaty and poisonous. 

Mr. Nightmare-Humanoid-Giraffe, meanwhile, heaves a sigh as he leans toward the flowers. “ⱤɆVɆⱤ₴Ɇ Ⱨ₳₦₳Ⱨ₳₭ł,” he announces in a grim tone. His smile vanishes again, this time being replaced by a guilty wince. “ł ₥Ʉ₴₮'VɆ ฿ⱤØ₭Ɇ₦ Ø₦Ɇ Ø₣ ₮ⱧɆ ⱤɄⱠɆ₴ ₩ł₮ⱧØɄ₮ ⱤɆ₳ⱠłⱫł₦₲. . .Đ₳₥₦ ł₮, Đ₳₥₦ ł₮, Đ₳₥₦ ł₮. . .”

His neck encircles the tree, giving it some space as he examines each of the gore-spewing flowers. The worry in his features grows worse and worse. If not for your reasonable disgust, you’d probably feel sympathy. 

Eventually, he stops what you can only categorize as his method of pacing. His neck arches like that of a striking cobra as he purses his lips, obviously thinking. “₦Ø₮ Ⱡł₭Ɇ ł ₵₳₦'₮ ₮₳₭Ɇ ₵₳ⱤɆ Ø₣ ₮Ⱨł₴ Ⱡ₳₮ɆⱤ,” he murmurs. After retracing his path around the fruit tree, his milky-white eyes wander back over to you. 

Your breath hitches in your throat. You feel your eyes twitch and grow to the size of dinner plates. Your body doesn’t feel light anymore. It feels heavy, far heavier than what the scale in your bathroom suggested the last time you used it. A sensation that can only be described as pin-and-needles mixed with overwhelming heat oozes along your skin. You keep backing away. Mr. Nightmare-Humanoid-Giraffe. . .well, he doesn’t lunge at you. He doesn’t look angry enough to do that. But he’s still following you, still staring at you.

Out of nowhere, your ankle collides with something solid, and you fall back. 

You don’t topple into the grass. You don’t crash down onto anything.

Your vision swims, the world around you becoming an awful mix of spiraling colors and noise as you fall and fall and fall and—

Your ears pop as your eyes snap open. You gasp for air, sitting up with enough force that it’s a miracle you don’t trebuchet across your bedroom.  Your hands fly to your head, scrubbing at your eyes, pressing at your temples. 

And as your vision adjusts itself to the darkness, as you roll your shoulders to try and force yourself to stop shaking, you happen to peer over at the pots on your desk. 

Sonny, Cher, and Yasmin peer back, still and silent as always.

. . .Or, they are now. 

You swallow a lump in your throat, wondering if you actually just managed to catch Cher’s snow-white petals quivering.

@sammys-magical-au @inkbedos

[lovecolibri]

No but for real it’s stupid because I don’t actually want to know more about Connor & Kameron because I wish they didn’t exist but we got a very sweet but ultimately kind of pointless flashback montage of two ransoms week but at no point in the last 9 months did they spend any time telling us anything about C&K or explaining their motivations or even a snippet of their lives to make them even slightly interesting and maybe offset their bizarre lack of boundaries.

Like I neither expect nor want the show to spend much time on them but I still think it’s weird to choose a donor so visibly different than your husband especially when it very genuinely increases his chances of racist encounters because however wrongly, people WILL be weird about this brown man with this white baby and he’s gonna have to keep explaining it over and over and over.

And then the idea that Kameron has literally no friends is downright alarming. Cause from a certain point of view if this was a different show, Connor socially isolated his wife and convinced her to get knocked up with the sperm of a man who was a total stranger to her so functionally no different than a proper anonymous donor but I guess she just takes his word for it that he’s a good person…. And then he dipped.

Poor Kameron, honestly. She should get to run Connor over with a car if medium size. But also what is going on in her brain??????

Yeah, I don't care about C&K at all and I don't understand how something that should have been about Buck learning and growing (ON SCREEN FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST) and what arguably SHOULD have resulted in him NOT donating because making other people happy at the expense of HIS peace of mind is actually the lesson that needed to be learned, became all about him managing the emotions of these two random people, and then the show not even really giving us any background or lead up to any of that either! This storyline has been a mess from the start but they already knew it wasn't being well received by the audience before mid-season and especially AFTER mid-season so we know they changed directions, but HOW was that direction not "Op! It's not actually yours Buck!"?! Because then they could have gone back and delved into Buck's emotions about it and again given us something about HIM. But it was never about Buck or his emotions! It was about KR wanting to create pointless drama and people didn't go for the cheating angle she tried to do last year, and her wanting to have a baby to hang over Buck's storyline.

Because lets be real, as much as this season has had 75 plots going for Buck, none of them have been done WELL, and almost none of them have given us ANY insight into what Buck is thinking or where he is at emotionally! The sperm donor arc fumbled that bag HARD, but also, he was looking for happiness, and then we haven't heard hardly anything about his state of mind since? And what little we got was about his death but they didn't delve much into that either?! He hasn't talked (ON. SCREEN) with BOBBY about it for some reason?! We know he was upset about being told he wasn't ready to be captain and wasn't settled in himself, but we haven't seen him talking about what he needs to do to be settled after he died? We haven't seen him talking to Bobby about how since he's still recovering maybe there are some books he should read or tests he should take to get a higher rank?! We've wasted how much screen time on the death doula and we haven't even really delved in to what has Buck so unsettled because he's also nearly died like....several times already? Which hasn't come up? We got told Bobby was his dad and yet they've barely spoken and not about anything deep or real since 6x11 told us that?

But sure, we have time for a 5 minute flashback of a couple we don't know. Yes, it was moving but at this point with SO much for the mains happening off screen or straight up just not happening, it's hard to enjoy those scenes because I just keep thinking about what we SHOULD be seeing.

[hekates-corner]

Apothecary Diaries | WN Translation | Arc 9 - Chapter 20

Hi and welcome!

For a number of reasons I ended up here. I go about translating to the best of my abilities, relaying all that happens in the chapters - pretty much playing wine-aunt.

So, be warned that all the spoilers are down below. Want some but not all? My dm's/asks are open!

New here or missed a part? Check out the Masterlist.

Enjoy & please take a look at the notes, if you're caught up!

Chapter 20 | A Twisted Past

Maomao checks with Kurumu: So you know the wind reading clan?

The self-proclaimed “beautiful girl” crossed her arms and grunted “Hmm/Well”.

Kurumu: I know, or rather, that’s what my great-grandfather used to call it when he was still living in the grasslands. Well, I only know very little/not much about it either, I’ve only asked my grandmother a few times.

Maomao: Can you tell us as much as you know?

Kurumu: Eh, what should I do?

Narrator-Mao notes that as she made a bad move, Kurumu got carried away.

Kurumu: I can’t say it’s free but/though

Grinning, Kurumu asks for money.

Taomei: Hehe, do you want to get turned in by/to the officials?

Eyes reminiscent of a bird of prey flashed behind Kurumu. Taomei looks on with a smile. Narrator-Mao notes that.. for some reason, the unrelated Basen cowered and the owl was trembling, its wings ruffled.

Kurumu’s face twitched.

As expected, Taomei is a scary wife who puts Gaoshun in place.

Maomao deliberately clears her throat.

Maomao(?): …… I think we’re making a concession here. You answer the questions. I won’t expose you to the officials. Also, depending on what you do in the future—

Taomei: Right, we can also discuss what to do with this owl

Taomei continues Maomao’s answer.

Kurumu: Understood. (it’s short and rushed, fitting for being gaslit like this). What I heard from grandma was that a long time ago, a nomadic family was hunted by slaves. I heard that most of the people who were hunted were killed, the women were taken as wives and the children were sold as slaves.

Narrator-Mao’s like “that’s info even I know”.. however, there is one thing that’s bothering her.

Maomao: I heard that the wind reading clan uses birds. Does this mean that the method of incubating and raising bird eggs has never ceased?

Kurumu: That’s it. Ah, that was a bad thing to say. The wind reading clan was destroyed. The divided half

Maomao: Half?

Maomao and the others stare at Kurumu.

Kurumu: That’s right. They must’ve been going around the grasslands for some kind of festival or something. In that case, wouldn’t it be better to move in parts, rather than all at once. There was also a means of communication using birds.

Maomao nods, saying that’s certainly true.

Maomao: But what happened to the remaining half? It seems that the wind reading clan is thought to have disappeared. Was the festival not continued?

Kurumu: Yes/Hmm. I don’t really understand/get it. Apparently my great-grandfather was one of the surviving members of the family, but he died when grandma was about ten years old. Granny said that he had taught her a lot about birds, but he was no longer grazing and was living in the city. However, there was a regular customer who would buy the pigeons he raised, so he didn’t have to worry about food/eating them.

Maomao: A regular?

Kurumu: Well, I was told that he must be some kind of big name, but I haven’t heard any details about him. I mean, even grandma didn’t seem to know much about it.

Everyone falls silent at Kurumus testimony.

Kurumu: Huh? Did I say something weird?

Maomao?: No, thank you very much.

As narrator she goes on ask-stating if that’s what’s meant with a horse coming from a gourd, which is a literal translation from a saying about a joke/something very unexpected actually coming true. But then she argues that she’d assumed it could be somewhat related to the wind reading clan, it just got to the core of it all more than she expected.

Kurumu: Compromise. Can I take this one home? I found a place that looked like a good spot for releasing (owly).

Maomao(?) asks if she’s actually going to let owly go if they hand owly over and Kurumu explains that that’s what she’d intended to do and what she’d been taught by her grandmother.

Maomao makes eye contact with Taomei. Taomei nodded quietly, so Maomao handed the cage containing owly over to Kurumu. Kurumu smiled broadly.

Maomao: May I ask you one more question?

Kurumu: What is it?

Now that the bird had been returned, Kurumu seemed to be in a good mood, saying this with her teeth showing.

Maomao: You said that your father and Gyokuou-sama’s mother are related, but is it okay to assume that your mother is also part of the wind reading clan?

Kurumu: I can’t say for sure, but…… She seemed to like birds and was used to handling them.

Narrator-Mao notes that if Gyokuou’s mother is from the wind-reader clan, there would be various connections.

Going on to think: I got some useful information though

However, Narrator-Mao’s like.. if they believe Kurumu’s story, several contradictions will appear.

Maomao thinks: If the wind-reading clan had not perished, perhaps they could’ve continued the festival even after that.

Which would mean they’d have to question what the meaning of what Nenshin, who’d become a serf, was doing actually was.

And why did the wind-reader clan become extinct?

Narrator-Mao thinks that a strange/suspicious point just appeared.

In her mind, concluding that one possible possibility is…

Maybe they pretended the wind reading clan was destroyed and used their abilities for something else. (also got that they destroyed them to use their abilities)

“The faster information is transmitted, the stronger it is” - she points out in her head.

Once you surround them with the fact that they perished, there’s many ways to use them. This isn’t strange, considering that Kurumu’s grandmother was already living in the city. It also makes sense that Kurumu’s great-grandfather passed away so early.

Maomao goes on thinking, about great-grandpa’s premature death, that once the technique has been passed down - those who know the past are in the way. (because they know too much)

Kurumu: Hey. Nee-chan. Can I go home now?

Maomao startles as Kurumu pokes her. She seemed to be in deep thought.

Maomao: Sorry. Could you please give me/us your contact information? I might also be able to introduce a customer who also wants a small bird.

Kurumu: …… Eh, I’m kind of scared

Narrator-Mao notes that Kurumu doesn’t seem to be fooled by her fake smile. (Maybe) There was a look on Maomao’s face as if she was going to let a valuable source of information escape.

Taomei: Hehe. I(?) would never do anything terrible to a child. Hey/Listen, could you please introduce me to your father?

Taomei’s eyes light up.

Kurumu reacted timidly, nodding.

Mind-Mao’s like: She’s just too strong

Going on as narrator: Even though she’s a different type from Suiren and the Madam (granny from Verdigris)

Mind-Mao thinks that it’s quiet around her/that it’s no wonder everyone around her (Taomei) is so quiet.

Chue is not as bubbly/outspoken as usual and Basen has a selfless look on his face, one that resembles Gaoshun. Maomao wonders if this is how today’s Gaoshun was created.

Once Kurumu was sent home with a/her servant, Taomei looks at Maomao.

Taomei: From the look on your face it seems like you’ve come up with a few things.

Narrator-Mao notes that this seems to be a polite way of saying: If you know something, tell me.

Maomao: This is just my assumption and it may be (wild and?) absurd

Recently, Maomao has had some antipathy with her adoptive father, Luomen, but she is basically faithful to his teachings. She doesn’t intend to judge things based on speculation without evidence.

Taomei: But my-, our master isn’t looking for a definite conclusion every single time/for every single thing. He’s a master of taking everything into his own hands, but could you please speak with him once so that we can plan for possible future countermeasures?

Taomei looks at Maomao with the eyes of a bird of prey.

Maomao?: Well then—

Maomao opens her mouth to tell Taomei to tell Jinshi her story.

Taomei: No, please meet and talk with him directly.

Maomao: I don’t think there’s a problem with talking about it here

As narrator Maomao doesn’t think that Taomei would twist around the speculations she told her.

Taomei: No. Sometimes I need a distraction

Maomao: Huh?

Maomao could only narrow her eyes at Maomao, who gave her a slightly mischievous smile

Notes

This shit’s getting wild xD

– Please note that this was originally Arc 10. I wrongly assumed since it's going to be LN 10 it would line up, but it was brought to my attention that 2 of the arcs are split up due to how long they are. It doesn't change much per se, since it's still future LN V10, but I'm sticking to the promised honesty, if I get something wrong somewhere. I've gone ahead and renumbered all the posts by now.

– A bird of prey is a bird like an eagle/hawk that kills and eats other birds/animals

– The line about the horse and the gourd was an actual chain of kanji. You can google it and it'll come up: hyōtankarakoma xD

– Which, btw is unrelated, but Basen’s often coming up in translators as “Horse flash” which is always funny. Taomei is peach(es)

– The “selfless” expression mentioned from Basen towards the end is “muga no kyouchi”, a state of self actualization. It’s a state where a person has surpassed his/her limit and starts to copy and execute techniques that he/she has seen/experienced in a random pattern. And yes, this is part of Prince of Tennis xD

– One of the only things I don’t know this time is who’s servant Kurumu leaves with.

– I most often got that sometimes Taomei (aka “I” not “you”) needs a distraction, which.. She's a married wife, with grown kids, her husband in tow - I did get it a minimal amount that sometimes “you” need a distraction, but with Maomao’s reaction and Taomei’s mischievous smile.. 6 and 9 is a number once added up that equals yoga between the sheets.

– I also got it a couple of times that Taomei has a couple of potential clients that could want birds from Kurumu’s dad, but for now I settled on one (Jinshi, the obvious target)

I hope you enjoyed. Buckle up, this is going somewhere. I just love that Taomei is domming anyone and everyone like they’re all just clay in the palm of her hands. Stay safe and I’ll see you soon!

[romantic-reveries]

Well, I got scolded for the first time at work today, and really, the timing couldn’t be worse considering how much I’ve hated everything lately anyway.

I couldn’t stop crying. I still feel like I could cry at a moment’s notice. And it wasn’t even fair what I was yelled at about anyway.

These people are fucking weird, and working with a family is the worst. I mean, I’m sure there are worse jobs. But it’s not even the job I dislike—it’s them. I actually like the job. But they make me not want to do it, not want to help. To do the bare minimum, take my paycheck and go.

I stepped into the office today to grab the wife (my manager) to ask her something, not thinking anything of it. It wasn’t that important, but I also didn’t realize I had restricted times of asking them things. I whispered her name to get her attention. She very aggressively “shh”’d me, as if I’d been loud, and then came out and basically said to never come in there when her husband is in a meeting. Which is fair, but I wasn’t trying to talk to him, anyway. She was in there doing her makeup.

She tells me then that it’s not the first time I’ve interrupted him in a meeting and that it’s very rude, which is wild, because I’m not the kind of person who does things like that because it IS rude? I tell her I haven’t and she insists I have, and then she’s like “and another thing, don’t argue with me when I correct you on something because this isn’t the first time you’ve done that, either” like — Jesus fucking Christ, then open your mouth and say something instead of exploding at me?

Like, it wouldn’t have even been so bad if she’d just been like “don’t ever go in there when he’s on a call” and I would’ve said I was sorry and I didn’t know, but it went from “never do that, and another thing, you constantly interrupt us when we’re busy and it’s rude, and then you argue with me when I correct you” and like, fuck. You really jumped from 0 to 100 and bit my head off for no reason.

But I can only think of one incidence each for both of her assertions. He has meetings every Monday morning and I’ve never once interrupted one of those because I know they’re happening, but I think I may have interrupted him once when he was talking with someone in the middle of a day. His office was open—how was I supposed to know? And I asked quietly if he was busy. It’s not like I just barged in and started asking things. I had no one else to go to, so I HAD to go to him. Frankly, he intimidates me and I only talk to him if I don’t have a choice.

And the only couple things I can think of where she’s ever “corrected” me was once when they left early, the husband told me to write in 6 on my time card, which put me at overtime for the week. It didn’t reflect on my hours, so I asked about it, and she told me that he said I must’ve “misunderstood” what he said which was so condescending and I know I didn’t. Maybe I misunderstood the sentiment (which was that they weren’t going to cut my hours short because they were leaving early), but it’s also like, they weren’t even paying but probably like $9 of overtime. Just fucking pay it. It’s not even about the money, it’s the principle of it.

Meanwhile, I accidentally saw the brother’s emails once when I was working at his desk, and he’d told our accounting lady to give his sister 40 hours even though she’s been on maternity leave since like… May? Early June? Most women don’t get that much maternity leave pay, it’s only because she’s their kid. Which is fine, I get them prioritizing family, but they’re so blatant over it.

And the other time, she told me if anyone calls for her husband to just take a message, and she got a little heated and went on a diatribe about how if he answered for everyone who called him he’d “never know a moment’s peace” (it’s called: being a business owner—sorry he chose to take over mommy and daddy’s business and makes lots of money doing so), but I didn’t contradict her in any way, I just didn’t know to do that because no one had told me. It felt like she was yelling at me over it, but I knew it wasn’t my fault because how could I have known? I just brushed it off. But I certainly didn’t ARGUE with her over it.

Anyway, I started crying because she was just like… so over the top about it. Absolutely snapped at me. And she felt bad for making me cry and then she said it was on her for not saying something sooner, because she’d meant to, but things get busy, blah blah blah, which made me feel worse because apparently it’s been weeks? And then she’s trying to tell me it’s not me and it’s not anything I’m doing wrong (???) and part of the reason she didn’t want to say anything was because she didn’t want me to feel like I COULDN’T come to them, because that’s what they’re there for.

So you’re here to help me, and you want me to come to you, and she insists she WON’T get mad (except that’s what she just did?), but she’s just explained to me that I shouldn’t ever interrupt them if they’re doing something else ??? That I’ve interrupted them with customers (literally ONLY ever either because I’M with a customer and have a question, or because one of our delivery people has called and needs someone like, now) so like??? And it’s like, they’ll close the door to his office all the time. That’s a pretty strong signal to not interrupt unless you really need something, so why not close it during his meetings? Or she could choose to do her makeup out here, in case she’s needed? It’s just fucking crazy to act like I’M the problem there?

It’s like they hired me as admin/sales, but I don’t even know why, because they won’t really let me sell. I’m just supposed to take overflow. And even if I was full time sales, their daughter will eventually come back, and we almost never get enough traffic to warrant having four salespeople. And there are just so many like, unspoken rules they think I’m supposed to know, and of course they know because they’re family, so she gets upset at me for not knowing but how could I???

As far as sales goes, it’s like, I’m only supposed to take a customer if the mom and son are already with customers, but sometimes they’re just busy or unaware or whatever, and am I just supposed to ignore that someone is wandering around? We don’t have a store big enough to have the luxury of letting them wander. They can get through the whole store and leave in two minutes flat.

So whatever, it’s fine. I just won’t try that hard anymore. I’m here for a paycheck and nothing more. If they wanna be lazy and not cross their T’s and dot their I’s, I’m not gonna double check things anymore and do it for them. I’ll ignore customers even if one of them is in the back or something. They can hear the door just as well as I can. This is their business, not mine. I’ll do what’s asked of me and not a drop more.

[florrickandassociates]

TGF Thoughts: 6x03-- The End of Football

This will probably be a short one. This isn’t a bad episode, but it’s a case heavy one, and, y’all, I have so much to say about episode four (which I’ve already seen*) that I just want to get through this one. 

*I have also now seen episode 5 oops

This episode’s title makes me happy. The Kings used to say that there was exactly one big thing CBS wouldn’t let them do on network*, and that was go after the NFL. This seems to no longer be an issue on Paramount+. 

* That they actually attempted to do; obvs they couldn’t have the characters swear, because hearing the word “fuck” is much more detrimental to society than gritty violence! 

I am not a big sports fan. Tbh, I held a grudge against football for a little while there because it was “that thing that meant TGW would start at 9:17 some weeks and 9:53 other weeks” when games ran over. That was so infuriating. While I’m walking down memory lane, here are the two worst things football ever did to me: (1) A game went into overtime the night that they killed off Will, meaning that the episode aired in Canada in its entirety before it started in the US. This meant that spoilers found their way to me, like, fifteen minutes before the episode aired. My fault for being on twitter, but I did not like that experience and I blame football. (2) There was one episode, I think it was the season six premiere, that was delayed nearly a full hour because a game went into DOUBLE OVERTIME over a touchdown that happened with literally one second left on the clock. That’s just cruel.  

So yeah football is bad and we should ban it because it used to get in the way of me personally enjoying my show when I wanted to. There are no other reasons it is bad. Just those. (I kid. I will likely “case stuff happens” nearly all of the football-related scene of this episode, but the traumatic brain injury stuff really is a big deal.)  

Carmen has moved into, but not furnished, her big new apartment. She’s watching a reality TV show that seems horribly delicious and working out when – you guessed it –  Charles Lester knocks on her door. This time, she’s got a gun. She puts it away when she recognizes Lester’s voice. She also notes that she didn’t buzz him in and he says the doorman let him up. It only took thirteen seasons, but I’m glad the writers have finally realized that doormen are a thing in fancy apartment buildings in big cities. It used to drive me crazy that people would just show up at Alicia’s door.  

I want to understand how Carmen’s compensation works. I assume that as a lawyer at what I believe is a prestigious firm, she’d be making enough to afford that apartment, but did she get a raise? Is her salary tied to the work she brings in, and if so, does that kick in immediately? Why is this a thing that I care about? I think it’s part of a broader question I have about Carmen’s status at the firm. To echo something @antiphon said about episode 2, does the rest of the firm know or care that Carmen’s bringing in these unsavory elements? Ri’Chard clearly does, but how does STRL feel? Liz? Diane? Why does everyone accept it like it’s a given that this firm would take on these clients? And how is Carmen allowed to operate so autonomously? Also, what is she getting out of being part of a firm if she’s a team of one and not using the firm’s resources (other than Jay, I guess)? I think this episode answers some of these questions, and Carmen was flat out asked why she stays at the firm last year, but I think the writers could’ve done a better job here. It feels like Carmen’s off on her own island and it doesn’t really make sense that this could, like, happen in the first place.  

Carmen is being summoned to something called a “Crypto-Prom” which sounds either like hell or the most amusing thing in the world.  

It’s a weird move to just bring someone a dress to wear, but I guess Charles Lester is a weird person.  

I would watch Carmen observe things for hours tbh.  

Carmen and Lester talk about Lester’s backstory; it’s mildly interesting. He flips the question around on Carmen and asks her why she’s doing this, because, quote (this is so ridiculous I need more than quotation marks to indicate these are his words), “Liz and Diane are lawyers. You’re the law.” WHAT? I mean, I get what he’s saying, but what a way of saying it.  

This scene is a little heavy-handed in its attempt to get us to understand that Lester is the future version of Carmen (in terms of career, at least).  

Ben-Baruch determined Carmen’s dress size, because he is “good at sizing up women.” BARF.  

The crypto prom is cut short by an undercover cop and Lester’s subsequent arrest for the murder of the CI embedded with Ben-Baruch last episode.  

Diane wakes up from her latest trip to a hallucination of a sexy shirtless man painting. Did you get that the drug makes her really horny? I think the writers are really being too subtle here. We need more elves with erections to make the point.  

Diane’s developing, or should I say DEEPENING, her obsession with flowers. The colors, apparently, “tickle her brain.”  

“I worry that I don’t see enough of the beauty of the world,” Diane says. Bettencourt asks why. Diane says it’s the “curse of the progressive” and I find this hilarious. I don’t doubt that she feels this way, but wow, is it a privileged thing to say. She’s cursed with not seeing the beauty of the world because sometimes in her cushy life filled with arts and luxury... she has to think about the suffering of others? I PITY HER.  

I get where she’s coming from, of course, it just sounds so PRIVILEGED. If she’d just said she doesn’t see enough of the beauty of the world, fine, but to call herself cursed? Okay, sure.  

“If one person is suffering, you can’t enjoy your life,” Diane says. Come on. I’m sure she loves to think of it that way, but, come on. If she really felt that, there are things she could be doing to help... like working on pro-bono cases...  

To continue making the point that Diane doesn’t see enough beauty, she begins to reference art. Compelling case, Diane, 10/10.  

Bettencourt, of course, knows the painting Diane’s referencing before she says its title. I appreciate (but maybe don’t need?) the visual of the painting. I appreciate it because I was going to look it up. 

Bettencourt tells Diane she is a “lifeguard” based on her analysis of the painting (she sees the suffering magnified while the painting shows it off in the corner with everyone ignoring it). Huh, that sounds familiar... 

Diane has her shoes off lollol  

I think the reason I like this high!Diane is that I feel like these scenes are actually just showing me who Diane is when she isn’t working. Like, sure, she’s high, but also this kiiiiiinda just feels like a less inhibited version of who I imagine Diane is in her free time.  

Diane worries she won’t be able to go to court after her treatment because she isn’t angry enough. “Maybe you’ll be better at your job if you’re not angry,” Bettencourt says, and that shakes Diane to the core.  

Bettencourt gives Diane homework, and she’s like OMG YAY HOMEWORK I LOVE HOMEWORK in a tone that sounds somewhat sarcastic but mostly serious. 

Diane saying, “I do. Guilty.” and raising her hand sheepishly when Bettencourt asks her if she knows what doomscrolling is is (1) adorable and (2) extremely cringe. I’m so here for it. 

Bettencourt tells her to stop doomscrolling for 72 hours, which is advice I could use, too. He says that it’s not just the treatment that can change her mood – it's also her behaviors.  

CASE STUFF HAPPENS!!! (sorry I'm very excited to get through this recap) 

Ok something I care about is happening now; this case is interesting in that Ri’Chard and Liz are working together. Liz acknowledges that Ri’Chard is good. He says arguing in court is his fourth favorite thing, after sex, food, and music. Literally why are you mentioning sex, dude?  

In her extremely gray and bleak office, Diane watches protests out the window. She gets a news alert about how the protests keep going on, then scrolls through a bunch of horrible news articles about guns, climate change, killer gators, skin cancer... there’s one that says “Texas politician sues own daughter over abortion” which is either a real thing or something that will be a real thing in the next year, and mandated school prayer. Then her phone chimes with a news alert about gun violence, a literal plague, “body odor definitive sign of rare genetic disease,” warehouse employees being overworked to death... she decides to unplug. So, on the one hand I really think there’s some truth to all of the “stop doomscrolling” stuff – I haven’t really checked Twitter today and I do feel better for it* -- but I also am not sure it works so well when there are actual protests outside of Diane’s (verrrrrry fake) window. So, Diane is just supposed to tune out the literal protests outside her office because it makes her feel the same way that... clickbaity headlines designed to encourage more engagement do? That’s a stretch. The problem with doomscrolling is that there is no point to it. Getting more enraged in an echo chamber and then spending more time on websites (and thus getting said websites more ad money) is a thing you can easily cut from your life. Paying attention to your surroundings is... not the same. I’m not sure what the point here is – that you can make yourself feel better personally but the world literally outside your window is going to be shit?  

*this is also, in large part, because when I use Twitter specifically, I feel like I have to see how every conversation or topic goes, even if I’d be perfectly fine never knowing about it. I get very obsessive about it and it turns into a huge time suck. 

Marissa, the newest member of her dad’s legal team, is looking obviously bored during a meeting. Diane grabs her and tells her to shut off access to the news, Twitter, and Facebook. Chumhum is ok though! Marissa wonders how Diane will keep track of the protests without any of this, to which I have two responses. (1) Diane could simply LOOK OUT THE WINDOW WHY IS NO ONE ACKNOWLEDGING HOW WEIRD IT IS THEY ARE ALL STILL IN THE OFFICE and (2) What’s there to keep track of with the protests, anyway? No one seems to know what they are about, so what information is there, other than their physical location? And if it’s just their physical location, please refer to (1).  

Also... preventing yourself from doomscrolling and cutting yourself off from the news are different things. There is a medium between obsessively refreshing Twitter and living under a rock. 

Wait guys I have to tell you this story about my mom because Diane just said something that sounds like the serenity prayer. So my mom and I were going through an old box of stuff and we found a necklace with the serenity prayer on it, and I was like, “uhhh why do we have this?” (you all don’t know my mom but believe me, this is not something it would be like her to own). I’m fully expecting her to say a friend gave it to her or it was sent in the mail by some charity, but NO. NO. She tells me, “Oh, I think I got it for you at Goodwill or something when you were really into Desperate Housewives and Bree was going to AA meetings.”  

I was twelve when that plot aired. So my mom bought me a serenity prayer necklace as a reference to a TV show plot about alcoholism... when I was TWELVE. This story says so much about my relationship to television.  

Carmen tries to convince Lester to find new representation. She’s Baruch’s lawyer, so she can’t be Lester’s. I know how this plot ends, and it surprises me that Lester can’t see it five miles away.  

I feel like we have seen a lot of these cases where the financier of the case has interests that are at odds with the person who’s actually in court.  

Case stuff happens. 

Carmen wakes up on the floor (??) to find her gun box empty. Ben-Baruch has broken in to threaten her! A lot of drama happens but basically he is scary and requires her to make Lester the fall guy by giving him shitty representation. 

Credits at the 17:20 mark! I’m sad there isn’t any sort of cute warning message over the skip button like there is for Evil.  

Thanks to Diane Lockhart’s patronage, flower stands are THRIVING despite the protests.  

After buying as many flowers as she can possibly carry, Diane boards the work elevator with Carmen (have these two interacted before? I genuinely don’t remember.). She offers Carmen flowers, and Carmen declines but asks if she came from a funeral.  

Diane says she didn’t, but she wants to make the downstairs cheerier. Remember in TGW when the floral budget was one of the first things to go? In a plot about the 2008 recession? Man this show has history.  

Okay, Diane, stop showing off how much more knowledgeable you are than everyone! You’re making me feel inferior! (I have seen, and very much liked (though I remember some parts being hella weird and the central theme being very heavy-handed), Metropolis. And it is not that deep of a cut. But it’s not enough for Diane to have art and literature?! She knows her film too?!)  

Carmen’s opposition in court is her former teacher. He seems like an asshole. He tries to throw her off by acting like she wasn’t memorable in class and it’s surprising she’d do well.  

Carmen returns some flowers to Diane and says her meeting is too serious for flowers; Diane offers to help. Carmen declines.  

Carmen must have a great memory because she’s able to quote this guy’s lectures. She could also be bullshitting (at least in terms of her certainty about when he said things).  

Diane’s office is still gray but now it also has flowers. I love having the flowers in every shot.  

Without doomscrolling to keep her busy, Diane realizes that she is... not doing work.  

She goes out into the open seating area and comes across a pack of associates discussing the news – women are being outlawed in Texas (one of those absurd headlines that you’re meant to, I think, take as a dark joke? Because even in this day and age that would be quite alarming?). Diane wants to know what’s happening! 

The associates all play along with Marissa and refuse to tell Diane, a partner, the news. I did not realize they all had that kind of relationship with her! Marissa, watching this, smiles to herself and tries to leave the room.  

Doesn’t Diane need to know SOME news to do her job?  

Marissa refuses to turn social media and news back on.  

There’s footage of Lester leaving the crime scene; he insists it’s a fake. 

Oooh a little moment continuing the tension between Carmen and Marissa when Marissa drops a vase of flowers off on Jay’s desk and Carmen tenses up.    

Carmen wants to know if the video is fake but doesn’t know if she’ll do anything with it... since she suspects Ben-Baruch faked it. Jay seems worried for Carmen. 

I guess people can get used to anything but it’s very alarming how little anyone seems to care about these protests.  

CASE! STUFF! HAPPENS!  

I don’t know why I love the detail of Liz having an Apple Watch, but I do.  

Marissa dumps a bag of toys on Diane’s desk to distract her. It’s pretty funny (though not as funny as when Kalinda read Diane Vampire Diaries fanfiction). Wild to do to a partner, but we all know Marissa has no boundaries.  

Diane decides to pour drinks for herself and Carmen since she’s picked up on Carmen’s stress. Look at Diane actually being a mentor!  

Carmen says she’s waiting for Liz; Diane notes that Liz probably isn’t coming back to the office this late and asks what she needs. Carmen gives Diane a thinly veiled summary of her predicament. Diane asks for more information, listening attentively, then says “With more drinking comes more clarity.”  

Carmen’s equally stressed the next day in court. Diane surprises her by showing up as co-counsel, which... like, actually, this is new ground for Diane? And probably an appropriate, good use of her time, given the profile of the clients and her status? (This is, of course, setting aside that I don’t think anyone at Reddick & Associates actually would want Ben-Baruch as a client in the first place.)  

Diane says she’ll do her best and Carmen can do her worst. Feels like a doomed plan, but, okay! 

Case stuff happens. 

Case stuff happens for the other case. 

Case stuff happens for Diane and Carmen’s case again. It’s done pretty well but I don’t have much to say about it.  

Ben-Baruch is pretty scary. 

I love that Lester says that Bishop “accepted Jesus after he left prison” and that’s why he’s not active anymore. Nice little wink at Evil, where Mike Colter plays a priest, right there. 

Football case stuff happens. 

Turns out the guy financing Liz and Ri’Chard’s case doesn’t want the same thing as the actual client. (This feels familiar.) 

Rivi shows up to get Carmen out of this mess. Ben-Baruch wants Carmen killed (or at least roughed up tbh I am not really paying attention to this right now and don’t want to rewind 10 seconds) and Rivi is like, I am more important than you and I want Carmen to be okay! Clever—also, scary. Rivi might be slower to turn on someone but Rivi absolutely WOULD turn on Carmen if needed. So this is... just getting Carmen in deeper.  

Diane is at Bettencourt’s office when a window explodes and the episode ends. Sorry, this is way less dramatic when you know how it ends. (I will say I was mildly worried they’d wind up kissing.) 

[humansun]

discipline? ? ? ? what is that

Written November 24th, 2022 at 4:01AM

Good morning! Today’s goal is to be disciplined. 

The past two days have been rougher on me because I’ve been adjusting to the fact that I have not been doing anything productive really, and it really bothered me. In a weird way, I felt as though I do better in structure. Structuring my day, having incentives, having deadlines, etc. I’m learning how important it is that I stick to my own deadlines.

It’s not easy doing what I am doing and I myself am facing the hardship of it. Being alone in a whole different country, trying to interact in a way that doesn’t make me vulnerable, finding things to do in my day that are productive rather than binge watching videos on Youtube. It’s not like it’s bad to do that, but I feel like I am getting sidetracked, distracted, and lazy when I don’t do what I need to.

Nothing I am doing is bad necessarily, but it feels unproductive in a bad way. It’s not an intentional desire to binge watch Youtube. It’s more something I am resorting to in order to get my mind off of what is actually happening. A small form of escapism. A little way to get back to what felt normal for a while - working from home, watching Youtube videos here and there, and still being a productive person.

At the end of the day though, working my 9-5 was not that fun either! I would rather much be in Vietnam with this stink bathroom and doing life on my own terms. I owe it to my friends for shedding light on this trip and reminding me not to lose myself in fear while I am here.

Living in fear is a concept I thought about while chatting with them on Messenger. It’s something that I believe happens gradually and without conscious awareness at times. We think what we are doing is good, but sometimes it ends up being a negative thing. 

I didn’t think I’d be one to start living life in this manner, but when you are seeing articles and information about the dangers of the world, why would I not be afraid? I am taking all the measures and precautions to ensure that I am safe and that’s a good thing. But to what extent is this done that I am slowly taking my life away?

There’s a chance I am no longer living my life, being adventurous or brave, and finding a nice little place to hide in the midst of all my traveling. Although this hiding place can be a place of refuge, it also is not the best way to live 24/7.

I’ve learned that lesson now, and I want to be conscious of what I am doing with my everyday life. How will I learn something every day, take advantage of the challenges that are coming my way, and be brave while careful? This is all hard to do, being someone who is stepping out of the boundaries of a typical path.

The biggest thing I want to work on is to have control over my life, which first is being mindful of what I am doing and how I am living. This would help me be aware of what distractions I am falling into and what I can do to prevent it and focus on my tasks at hand. Secondly, I want to prioritize discipline in my life. This means getting something done even if it feels like I cannot, but proving it to myself anyway.

That means reaching a word count each day, page count each day, and making sure these deadlines are met regardless of what I have planned. Of course, there has to be room for flexibility, but for the most part, I want to set my goals and reach them mindfully.

At the end of the day, my biggest focus in life is wisdom. This situation and challenge for me is a lesson of how to be disciplined, mindful, and brave in the space that I am in. I am being challenged for this short period of time to see what I can do, how I will take advantage of my time abroad, and what opportunities may come of it.

I know that I am very capable, but I must prove to myself that everything I wish for is possible. That means there are baby steps I must take to make these ideas happen!