#I got a bunch of other sketches that were made in the spawn of the last week

[ogrumm]

Physics Experiment Devlog 1

About a year ago, I got really sidetracked on a porn game idea. I've always been interested in the more interactive and visual side of porn games. Sure, I've enjoyed plenty of visual novels and rpgs with sex fight mechanics, but I especially miss the flash games.

Yes, a lot of them were a bit primitive. You might get a rubbing mechanic, running your mouse over a body part to raise a "stimulation" meter. Or maybe it's a bit like a point-and-click with the goal of getting off the character. I wanted to go one step further, though, with a 3D animated, physics enabled character.

Yes, I wanted realistic dick physics.

I considered my options, and decided to make it a browser game, since those are extremely accessible. I went through my usual analysis paralysis at the start of the project, considering how to approach it. I briefly considered using Godot, but then I found out the web exports were quite large and didn't work well on some browsers, and I made a bad, horrible, no-good, stupid decision. I'd roll my own engine.

I ended up gluing together the physics library rapier, with the graphics library ogl, and stumbling around a lot. By December 2023, I had... you could generously call it a prototype. Click or tap to spawn sausages, drag to rotate the camera.

And, half a year later, I have got 75% of a physics and level data importer, working with a Blender exporter! Here's some screenshots:

I can use Blender as the level editor, adding physics and other custom data to objects and then importing it into my framework. It uses gltf files under the hood, a nice 3D scene representation format.

It's just making me wonder... Is this worth it? Sure, I learned a lot from this. But also, after a year and a half of work, it's only half-finished. If I actually used any of the more common tools, I'd have an actual game to show off instead of a half-baked engine. A third of the driving force behind this is sunk cost fallacy at this point. Here's a shortlist of things I need to finish to make the porn game I had in mind originally:

Import jointed meshes correctly

Decouple physics ticks from frame rate

Do the art (sketching, sculpting, rigging up a dick)

Implement interaction mechanics (a bunch of linear algebra that would let you drag the dick around)

Animated properties for erections and such

Oh well, everyone needs a boulder to push up a hill, right? I'll probably take a break with something simpler before coming back to this, though.

[caguaydreams]

I'm drawing these idiots

You know how Puppycat can be picked up as a blaster cannon of sorts? Yeah well-

Also I'm having trouble with his ridiculous cape jk it's a fabulous cape

Edit: added a pic

[nbrook29]

Kiss or Slap

Sander doesn’t remember when exactly their group made the riverside near the Scheldt their new hangout spot, but he couldn’t be more grateful for it as a cold breeze washes over his overheated body, providing a momentary relief against the scorching heat falling from the sky. It’s probably why the park is fuller than it usually is on Thursday afternoons, packed with people spread on their picnic blankets, searching for a bit of shadow under the big trees and desperately craving a bit of wind. 

It’s so hot he doesn’t even feel like sketching, preferring to just lie on the grass without moving a single muscle, and dying in peace. Even the enticing smell of cinnamon rolls that Noor brought with her isn’t enough for him to reach out and take one from the basket, the action requiring too much movement on his part.

“Guys, come on, we have to start or we’ll never get it done! Sander, get your lazy ass up.” He grunts when he feels Leon’s merciless fingers jabbing him in the ribs.

“Can’t we wait until it gets a little less hot?”

“No, cause that’s not happening in the nearest future and we need new content,” Nathan butts in, followed by Noor, which makes Sander officially outvoted. So he heaves a deep sigh, puts his shirt back on and ruffles his hair to make himself more presentable, rolling his eyes at Noor’s appreciative whistling.

“Someone’s gonna snatch himself a bunch of kisses today with that smoldering look,” she teases, pretending to give him a once over.

“Is that your way of telling me you want one for yourself, sweetheart?” He’s immensely proud of himself when her entire face scrunches up in disgust.

“Eww, no, feels like incest at this point.” Which is kinda true given the fact they’ve known each other since kindergarten and became best friends making sand castles. He fires an obnoxious wink at her, fully anticipating a shove which comes as expected within seconds, with Noor calling him a creep in between laughter.

“Who should we start with? Senne? Wanna go first?” Sander watches as Leon takes out his camera equipment and checks the settings as the rest collects their things.

“I guess, yeah. And then Nathan after me?”

“I’m not doing it, man, you know Britt, she’s gonna flip out.”

“Be a good reason to break up with her,” Sander mutters under his breath, not really feeling apologetic when Nathan shoots him a glare. It would be a long time coming, and honestly, Sander can’t wait for that moment to come. Just being in her presence gives him chills, she’s that much of a horrible person. A few years ago, he read something about alternate universes and sometimes when he looks at her he can’t help but think there’s a history there with the two of them, in a past life or something. At least it would explain that weird energy between them.

If it’s true, he feels very sorry for that Sander. 

He roots for him to run far away from said devil’s spawn.

“I can go next, I don’t have the ball and chain,” Noor says innocently, but she’s smirking over Nathan’s shoulder at Sander who pretends to high five her in their shared hatred for Britt.

“Yeah, us lonely birds will sacrifice ourselves and take the hit for the wellbeing of our channel,” Sander laments playfully, making Senne snort.

“Dude, you’re on your own by your own choice.”

“And pickiness. Don’t forget pickiness,” Noor adds smugly.

Sander huffs in protest. “I’m not picky! I just...” He cuts off because he’s not about to just explain it all now.

“Just what?”

“Specific about what I want.”

Brown curls, brown eyes, shortish, lean, pierced ear, cute giggle, elegant hands and a smile brighter than the sun. 

To be exact.

“Yeah. That’s picky.”

“Whatever,” he replies grumpily, and decides to ignore Noor’s knowing look. Sometimes he feels like she has a sixth sense and can read him like a book. Or she’s just less oblivious than the boys in their friend group. That’s a totally possible option too.

Thankfully, she doesn’t push him further (she’s awesome like that), though Sander has a feeling she’s gonna grill him later when they’re alone. For now, she checks her lipstick in her phone as they all briefly plan the video.

Not like there’s that much to plan; a few days ago, they decided to shoot a kiss or slap challenge for their YouTube channel because it had been wildly requested by their viewers.

Sander still doesn’t quite know how he became a part of a YouTube channel in the first place, always considering himself to be a bit more, well, sophisticated than that? But Leon was into it from the beginning and made them all participate in exchange for free beer, until one day one of their videos blew up.

If you can call getting 100k views on one video blowing up. 

Anyway, they got semi-popular amongst Flemish teens and even managed to snatch a sponsorship with Mentos (however small the offer was) that paid actual money. And he had just managed to move out of his family house so any money coming his way he welcomed with no questions asked. 

So they’ve kept shooting silly challenges slash anything else that’s a trend at a given time and have been able to cover their art supply needs with what little they earned. And, though Sander refused to admit it in the beginning, it’s actually kinda fun. It’s definitely better than his part time job at Pull&Bear where he has to deal with obnoxious customers on an almost daily basis.

They record a short introduction near the river, quickly going over the rules and explaining that the three of them will be competing in who gets more kisses versus slaps. 

“Hey, you know what, this is actually unfair cause you both can kiss anybody,” Senne points out all of a sudden, receiving four pairs of unimpressed glances.

“No one’s stopping you from getting kisses from boys too, dude,” Sander is quick to shut him up, shit-eating grin on his face as he gives him his first (light) slap to the cheek. 

They follow Senne around the park with a camera as he turns on his charm and smiles sweetly at the girls he chooses for the challenge, doing surprisingly well on the first few attempts. But when they venture deeper into the park and he tries his luck with college girls, he gets 5 slaps in the row to the rest of the group’s utter delight. In the end, his results are a blow to his pride and even Sander feels sorry for him, giving him a pat on the back while trying to hold his laughter in at Senne’s grumpy face.

Noor does much better, naturally, as her upbeat personality and a wide smile have always made boys and girls turn their heads. She gets a kiss after kiss, blush after blush, and two phone numbers in the process. Senne argues again that it’s unfair because no one’s gonna slap a girl anyway, but Leon just calls him a sore loser while Noor shamelessly flirts in French with another girl right in front of the camera.

Sander’s very proud.

Taking a quick sip of water, he gives Leon a thumbs up and starts his round, coming over to three blond girls chilling near the skateboarding ramps, trying very hard not to come off as creepy and clarifying the kiss part being only a cheek kiss. The girls erupt in giggles, but they all grant him a light kiss. One of them tries to flirt with him after, but he shoots her down before she can get too into it.

“Such a heartbreaker, you,” Noor coos at Sander’s pained face when they all walk away.

“That’s you, and you actually enjoy it,” he quips back, sticking his tongue at her.

“I do not, shut up!”

Fifteen minutes and fourteen kisses later he’s officially in the lead, sealing his victory with a kiss number fifteen he receives from a cute redhead. He’s gloating in Senne’s bemused face about nobody choosing to slap him when he stops in his tracks.

It’s the proof of his hopeless infatuation that he’d recognize that laugh everywhere.

He looks around for its source, but he comes up short. Then, his eyes focus on the skatepark area and his heart starts beating faster.

Because it feels like a sign. Like the universe is giving him a chance to finally do something. Make a move.

“Hey, can we shoot one more try?” He asks the guys, trying to sound casual while glancing furtively in the direction of brown curls.

“You’ve already won, but I guess?”

Nobody questions him about his reasons, they just follow him to the ramp.

And he’s so fucking nervous. 

It’s incredible, really, how he generally has no problems talking to people he’s interested in, conversation flowing without him even trying, gaining easy smiles and appreciative looks wherever he goes, some natural confidence to him. 

But that boy. That boy is something else.

He makes him question everything he says, makes his palms sweat and makes his deep hidden shyness come onto the surface.

Sander saw him for the first time during Open Day at the Academie in may, strolling casually through the hallway with his friend, completely oblivious to the turmoil he was causing to Sander’s heart.

That was the day Sander saw an angel. 

Fate placed him on his path again sooner than he could’ve hoped, the boy participating in a 2 week film course at his school only several days after he saw him for the first time. And he tried so hard to convince himself to talk to him over that time, but he only managed a few smiles while passing him by in the hallway. 

That and that one stupid joke he said to him while they were waiting in line at the cafeteria that makes him cringe in despair just thinking about it. Seriously, it’s like his entire cool evaporates when he’s near him.

But, the boy laughed at it. So maybe it wasn’t as horrible as Sander is making it to be. Or he was just being nice. 

Robbe. 

Robbe, who he’s been crushing on ever since that fateful day in may.

Robbe, who was at the same party he was last weekend.

Robbe, who he talked to at that party and managed to calm his nerves enough to be charming and funny.

Robbe, who giggled, blushed and bit his lip at Sander’s dumb jokes that evening.

Robbe, who slipped through his fingers because Sander blacked out soon after.

He almost never drinks, but that one night he did, celebrating the beginning of summer break, and not realizing his usual abstinence meant he was now officially a lightweight. What an awful timing.

Robbe doesn’t notice him right away, having his back turned to him while talking animatedly to his friends. Taking a deep breath and plastering a smile to his face to hide his nervousness, he approaches them.

“Hey guys, got a second?”

He notices the recognition in Robbe’s face right away, and Sander shoots him a quiet “hi” when his eyes meet his, an unsure smile blooming on his face.

“Hey, what’s up?” One of the boys nods at the camera.

“I’m Sander, and we’re shooting a video for our YouTube channel, the kiss or slap challenge,” he quickly explains, the boys’ faces lighting up.

“Hey, we have a channel too! I’m Moyo, this is Jens, Aaron, and Robbe.” Moyo reaches out to bump his fist with him and damn, Sander has to find that channel if Robbe is a part of it.

Jens levels him with a look. “So, you want us to kiss you or slap you?” 

“Pretty much, yeah?” Sander chuckles because he’s aware it’s ridiculous, but he’s a man on a mission here, give him a break.

“I think Robbe should represent all of us, don’t you think so?” Moyo proposes, tongue in his cheek as he checks with the rest of his friends. Sander catches the death glare Robbe sends the boy before looking back at him and crossing his arms, looking a bit out of place. And, fuck, the last thing Sander wants is to make him uncomfortable.

So he asks softly, “you’re in?” and waits for agonizing five seconds as Robbe watches him, eyes narrowed, before his features smooth out and he smiles at him.

“Sure, why not.”

Relieved, Sander lets out a chuckle and tries to keep his cool. “Okay then - kiss or slap?”

Robbe squints against the sun and makes him wait another few seconds before he answers, but Sander’s not worried because there’s a soft smile on his face and obviously his angel wouldn’t-

“Slap.”

Wait, what.

He can hear his friends bursting in laughter at this unexpected turn of events while Sander can only stare in shock because how could he miscalculate the situation this much?

Gulping, confused and heartbroken, he asks, “you’re sure?”, to which Robbe nods with a poorly hidden glee.

“But you have to close your eyes cause I can’t hit you while you're looking at me.”

Heaving a deep sigh and trying to save a face despite the humiliation flooding his body, he nods and closes his eyes, steeling himself for it.

But it never comes.

Suddenly, he feels a hand cupping his cheek and he flinches a little, but then soft lips touch his in a kiss so gentle he blinks his eyes open, not knowing what’s happening.

“That was payback for you promising to call me and not keeping your word,” Robbe whispers against his lips before leaning away, something sad and wistful passing through his face. Sander is left completely dumbfounded, ignoring the hollering from the two groups as his eyes fleet all over Robbe’s face.

It’s difficult for him to collect his thoughts because holy fuck, Robbe has just kissed him and he’s internally freaking out. He finally manages to get his bearings when the remnants of a smile slip off Robbe’s lips.

“I-, Robbe, you have no idea how much I wanted to call you, but I don’t have your number.”

“I gave it to you. At the party?” He doesn’t look like he believes a word Sander is saying.

“Um, I kinda blacked out and don’t remember much after like one-ish?”

“You saved it though, I saw you typing it in,” Robbe argues again, but this time he doesn’t look so sure. “Wait, what’s your number?”

Sander watches him entering digit after digit before hitting call. He fully expects a plain number to appear on his screen, eyes widening when he sees what pops up instead.

zk bambieys 🥺🦌👁️💘🧡💖💞 calling

“Fuck, you did give me your number.” He’s not fast enough to hide his screen from Robbe, but he can't even feel embarrassment once he notices the frown disappeared from his face.

“Bambi eyes?” There's a teasing note in his voice, but his pink cheeks sell him out.

Sander scratches his head. "I was very drunk, you can't hold it against me. Also, your eyes are really beautiful," he clarifies, winking when Robbe laughs at his shameless flirting. "Hey, I tried to find you on instagram, but nothing came up. I was really hoping we're gonna bump into each other again. Sorry for being a dumbass and not realizing I had your number this entire time?”

“It’s okay.” Robbe shoves his hand into the pockets of his jeans, swaying on his heels. Sander decides to put them both out of their misery and take the initiative.

“So if I asked you out, would you say yes?”

It looks like Robbe’s about to nod, but then he bites his lip, an almost cheeky smile directed at him. “I guess you have to call me to find out.” And then he gets on his skateboard and casually skates away to the nearest ramp, pulling a surprised laugh out of Sander.

If he was intrigued before, now he’s totally smitten with this wonder of a boy, because damn. 

Their friends finally seem to regain their voices and speak over each other at what just happened, but Sander doesn’t pay them any attention, just takes out his phone again and pressing the call button. 

Watching as Robbe comes to a full stop at the top of the ramp, he cocks his head with a grin and waits until he picks up.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Sander.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” Robbe laughs into the speaker.

“Will you go out with me?”

He meets his eyes across the skatepark as Robbe makes him wait again.

Then, with a smile so radiant it overshadows the sun, the boy finally gives him his answer.

“Yes.”

[theliterateape]

We Killed Jason Todd

By Matt Markman

In 1988 my friends and I killed a kid.

He was just a boy really. We had help it wasn’t just me and my pals. there were adults involved, lots of them. I mean we were young we were just thirteen and really couldn’t comprehend the ramification of our actions, the adults knew what they were doing. I’m painting it to sound way more sinister than it was, and in today’s society, wouldn’t trend on Twitter but maybe in the ’80s, it was probably considered quite ominous.

To set your mind at ease, it was Jason Todd. You know, Batman's sidekick, The Boy Wonder, Robin—well, the second Robin anyways. And I helped kill him.

I was big into comic books but my favorite was, The Dark Knight, The Caped Crusader, The Batman… He donned the best costume, he had all the money and was the most intelligent of all the superheroes. That last trait right there, the fact that he was considered a superhero and he had no actual super powers made him cooler than the other side of the pillow. You know how The Big Bang Theory has convinced the world it’s an Emmy-winning sitcom worth watching? I think it’s the fact that Batman was someone any one of us could actually be. Sure we needed to start with a base coat of genius followed by a splash of handsome billionaire playboy then train overseas in martial arts for several years, but if you had those things you, too, could be a vigilante. You ask me today and I'd stand by the fact that Batman would beat Superman in a fight, say ten out of ten times. This is not debatable because super beings from another planet are not real.

My favorite thing about Batman, though, is his ability to balance out good and evil. He spawned one of the greatest comic book villains and fictional characters ever created, The Joker. They have tried and tried again but in my opinion never got close to the Clown Prince of Crime—maybe Negan from The Walking Dead, he's pretty ruthless. The Joker is what would happen if a stand-up comedian became a criminal mastermind, so basically the plot of the 2019 film Joker.

My love for Joker made sense because growing up I was always more into the bad guys than the good guys. Watching and playing with G.I.Joe, I was always on the side of Cobra Commander, the twins Tomax and Xamot, and Zartan because they were always more glamorous and eye-catching than the boring ass Joes. Just once, I’d like that “knowing is half the battle” part at the end of the cartoon to have been Storm Shadow giving us kids a tip on how to fuck up Shipwreck and his stupid Parrot. Megatron, Skeletor, Shredder, Mumm-ra…

The list goes on, but the antagonists always resonated with me. they had a much better and more intriguing agenda than the good guys did. I know that wasn't the purpose, we were supposed to cheer on the good guys, like the idea of saving the world and all, but the mayhem… It’s like Alfred Pennyworth said, “Some men just want to watch the world burn.” It’s odd because the bad guys in my life were real, the bullies and I didn't like them at all. They tormented me daily unprovoked because I was short and had big ears. Perhaps my love for the dark side stemmed for my desire to be on that side because in real life there was no Superman swooping in to rescue me from the clutches of Lex Luthor. 

There were two sides, and good had a lack of champions looking out for the weaker, smaller good guys. The bad guys in my neighborhood, well, they were real and never really foiled and more importantly, they always got the girl in the end. Fuck the good guys!

My admiration for evildoers achieving their agenda was tested in 1988, Batman was running a four-part series called A Death in the Family. It was your typical Batman arc. Somehow, The Joker was going to get the upper hand on The World’s Greatest Detective only to be bested in the end by Batman. But this time, the third comic decided to do something nobody had never seen in the industry. The writers were going to give the fans the opportunity to decide where they were going to go with the story, only it was an option between two different roads, one quite unconventional. Apparently a few years earlier, one of the writers, Dennis O'Neil, had seen a sketch they did on SNL where Eddie Murphy held up a Lobster—Larry the Lobster—and was asking viewers to decide whether Larry was boiled and eaten or was to be set free. The choices were offered in the form of two phone numbers both costing fifty cents a call. One number was a vote for him to be freed and the other number was a vote for Larry to be murdered, smothered in butter, and devoured by Axel Foley. Ultimately, after nearly 500,000 calls, the people voted for Larry the lovable lobster to be pardoned with a 12,000 call margin. The popularity of this bit intrigued O'Neil and A few years later he decided to implement it in his Death in The Family storyline.

In the third book, The Joker had taken Batman's sidekick, the Boy Wonder, hostage. He’d beaten him bloody with a crowbar leaving a cliffhanger to be wrapped up in the fourth book. The last page of the comic was full page and at the top read in true ’80s Do the Right Thing fashion: “Robin will die because The Joker wants revenge, but you can prevent it with a telephone call!” They even phrased it to steer you down the hero’s path, like you can literally be Batman with one phone call. Underneath the imploring verbiage were two numbers, dial one number; The Joker fails and Robin lives, Batman would once somehow saves the day. However, call this other number and The Joker succeeds and Robin dies. Gruesomely.

Wow! They were going to let the fans decide the fate of Robin, really this was one of my earliest introductions to a reality voting competition type show. In my opinion, it was a bad idea. Robin was always the worst. Go back and read through an adventure or two involving Jason Todd and tell me he wasn't always whiney and bellyaching. He was never going to be iconic or cool like Bruce Wayne or even his predecessor Dick Grayson—the first Robin. See, Dick got pissed off, decided he was tired of being in Batman's shadow, ditched the Robin costume, threw on a black blue and gold costume, moved to another city and became Nightwing. Dick was a go getter, ambitious. Grayson’s Robin was a winner, Todd's Robin was an irritating little bitch; he was not an innocent lobster.

I went to my mother and asked if I could make a call that was going to cost just fifty cents and I would pay her back or she could just take it out of my allowance. She wanted to know what it was for and mostly wanted to confirm it wasn't for an adult sex line, which costs more than fifty cents a minute, but that’s a different story. It was nothing as tawdry as phontercourse, I just wanted to help murder an annoying teenage sidekick. My mother response was “Oh, yeah, that’s fine.”

I think after it was exposed that it wasn't phone sex anything else I said went in one ear and out the other, surely she didn't think I was actually voting for a plucky comic book sidepiece to be murdered by The Joker. So that’s what I did. I cast my vote along with a majority of DC comic book fans that shared my detest for the boy wonder. Ten thousand votes were recorded with a narrow margin going to Robin dying. I think the writers never suspected that fans would go that route.

O’Neal himself voted for Robin’s stay of execution. A man of his word, Batman issue #429 was released and Robin was killed by The Joker in an explosion and we were to blame for it. Sad to say but you give a bunch of comic book nerds the power I think it would go bad every time. That day we were all proud to be The Joker's henchmen. I felt like a soldier at the end of Star Wars cheering madly while The Joker received his metal shouting, “I helped that happen!”

So many shows these days embrace our fascination with the anti-hero with the success of The Sopranos, The Shield, Breaking Bad, hell Narcos had me rooting for Pablo Escobar—Pablo fucking Escobar. I wouldn't say I was a bad person growing up. Quite the contrary, I was a shy nerd with no power to do anything but pick my books up after they were smacked to the ground. What I’m saying is don't give me the power to make important life or death decisions with your franchise because myself and the other dorks will have the bodies of Orko, Snarf, and Jimmy Olson lying in a shallow grave, just tell me what number to dial… or text.

Matt started performing standup comedy in 2004 in Las Vegas and is now a regular at every major comedy club on the Las Vegas strip. He released his first comedy album in 2016 titled Uncut available on iTunes. More about Matt and his upcoming appearances can be found on MattMarkman.com.

[haldenlith]

It's early and I feel like rambling about my cyberpunk AU headcanon I have with Baldur's Gate 3. So, I mentioned with Astarion that he has cybernetic hardware, it just wasn't visible. I got to feeling like sketching it out, so here we are.

(Without clothes and with to show how much is actually visible with a jacket on.)

"The SK-02, or less elegantly called The Suzuki Skulljack due to its placement, is at this point fairly vintage, but even vintage cybergear has demand with trendy elites that like that look to the synth-skinned augs. Back then, this was pretty bleeding edge. No latency connection since it interfaces with your brain directly. Too bad a bunch of black hats made daemons to utilize a vulnerability in the hardware back then. There's security fixes now, but, well, like I said, only the trendy elite get these now. As a fashion statement. Strange, though, don't tend to see elves like you sportin' tech like this..."

Astarion's augment is vintage by virtue that Cazador forced it onto him about a century into his slavery. The aforementioned "daemons," or programs, that utilize the exploit are exactly why Cazador fitted the SK-02s onto his vampire spawns: it allows for manipulation of the nervous system for the explicit purpose of remote punishment. Why use a flog when you can be a modern vampire lord, and now just remotely activate a program to send your unruly slaves into a writhing ball of extreme pain? The program also serves as a weak tracker, to track the cheeky runaway servant.

Other details of this universe in my head, as far as Astarion is concerned:

- He's a little tech-dumb. Cybernetics were a thing, but were still in their infancy when he was alive. The 200 years he's spent under Cazador has left him out of the technologic loop. He knows basics, like operating current gen phones and cars, using computers for the most basic of functions, but past that, he's no hacker. The SK-02 serves little purpose to him as it is, since he has no idea how to use it, but... he could learn.

- Astarion has some interest in further augmentation, for obvious Astarion-reasons (more power = good), but he's a little shy of actually getting them due to the fact he'd be vulnerable during the procedure.

- One of his top priorities is getting that program removed, of course, outside of figuring out the tadpole and killing Cazador.

- He can way more easily get away with hiding his vampirism as simply eccentric cosmetics, as in that day and age, surgery to augment eye colors isn't exactly unusual. His lack of body temperature, however, is a lot harder to explain...

- To Astarion's benefit if he does get more augmentation: Undead are exceedingly easy to augment for the virtue of having zero risk of rejection. A dead body doesn't have an immune response.

Hope you guys enjoyed a peek inside my skull and the whole AU that lives rent free in my head.

[achliegh]

Hi! I'd love to see the twins birthdays from the Olive and Otto prompt list. I love both characters!

Hello my Garbage Clan!

number  4. The twins birthdays (4-7 For right now)

Here it is, I hope you enjoy it! 

I really enjoyed writing this one, it was fun!

TW/CW: Complete Chaos, Food, Just a mess, Mild breakdown, I feel like there is just always chaos with this family.

Characters belong to @lumosinlove

July 31st 2020

Leo was excited, probably more excited than his spawns. He was cooking up a storm in the kitchen, making all of the kids favorite foods. He was making an ice cream cake made of ice cream bars, whipped cream, chocolate chips and malt mix. It was his favorite thing for him when he was a small child and he knows the twins foam at the mouth for ice cream. Putting the cake back into the freezer he can’t stop smiling. He never thought anything of having kids until he and Ink started at the positive pregnancy test for a solid twenty minutes. 

Now he couldn’t imagine his life without them, the kids were napping with his boyfriends and he took so many pictures it was probably what was causing his phone to tell him he’s out of storage. It was Olive and Logan on the bed the twins were occupying while staying with them, all starfished out and Logan was drooling with Olive was making the cutest little snoring noises. Ott and Finn had fallen asleep on the couch while Finn was reading to the little knucklehead. Book resting on their laps with Otto snuggled into Finn’s chest gripping his shirt. 

How did he get so lucky?

Humming to the music in his one earphone so he didn't wake the chaos just yet, he heard the front door open. He looks up from where he was checking the sausages he was cooking. Waving silently and putting a finger to his lips signaled for Ink, June, Noelle and Thomas to be quiet. They were in charge of decorating, bright colors were the kids favorites. Olive has a heart for sports, literally any sport, while Otto is a sucker for drawing right now. That included on their white sweatshirts and walls. 

So a coloring section was set up and all they could come up with for sports besides just going to the rink, which was closed due to updates to the frame, was WII games. Lame but so fun. She wanted to go rollerblading but the cat that is wandering around the apartment tells Leo she would try to bring home another animal. 

After everything was set up and the apartment was full of hockey players in little party hats and anxious kids. They woke the chaos, and chaos was it. Olive was so shocked with all the people in the apartment she just turned around and closed the door behind her. After a few seconds she came back out and acted surprised causing a laugh from all the adults.

Otto was awoken by Finn laughing as twenty other kids climbed on top of him to wake them up. Otto smiled and flushed at all the attention. He got up and ran to Leo. Who picked him up and kissed his cheek.

“Happy Birthday Buddy” Otto buries his face into his neck still blushing hard. Especially when Celeste comes up and kisses both his cheeks. He has had a fascination with her since they first met at family skate.

“Kuny!” Olive sees her favorite person with his mouth full of pickles wrapped in prosciutto and basically tackles him to the ground while Nado and Ink laugh. They were discussing the new tattoo that Nado and Kuny want. Same but different. 

Kuny hugs her and swallows the pickles before standing up and swinging her upside down like everyone knows she loves. 

When it came to opening presents there were so many that Leo didn't know where they were all going to fit, besides in the third bedroom that isn’t ever used. When it came to Leo and Ink’s presents for the twins they were the very last ones. 

Ink gave Otto her old sketchbook to draw in, all her old sketches were taken out, she also gave him a bunch of markers and told him they would be taken away if they found any marks on the walls. To Olive she gave her a brand new pair of roller skates. Bright green with black accents because Olive hasn’t stopped talking about Shego from Kim Possible.

Leo gave Otto a build-a-bear that was a lion and had the team saying they loved him, so he could take it to doctors appointments and anywhere else he wanted and he would always be loved. What they didn’t expect was for Otto to start crying, he was always a quiet little thing that kept to himself unless his social batter was on full. He also was really bad at controlling his emotions, but he is a small child so what do you expect. Otto sobbed into the lion and then looked at the team like they were the most amazing people in the world. Dumo held him while Ink talked to him softly and Leo gave Olive her give. Gymnastic lessons starting next week, they were in NOLA as the twins would be going back with Ink in two days. She squealed and hugged him while jumping up and down.

The rest of the night went smoothly… Until Marc and Otto started a food fight with the ice cream cake.

July 31st 2021

5 years old. They were past the terrible twos and the terrible threes. The kids were in school and their mother and her wife had moved into a cottage outside of Gryff. Finn was out with the kids trying to distract them in a candy shop while the cottage was being filled with people and food. 

Everyone was frantically trying to set up for the surprise, everything from the blow up obstacle course and the ball pit, to the video games in the basement. The music was playing from the bluetooth speakers all over the house, they were going through a country music faze much to the dismay of most of the team. 

Otto also hasn’t stopped wearing Leo’s old cowboy hat for at least a month.

It was time, they heard Finn’s car rolling up the driveway and everyone froze, scrambling to their horrible hiding spots, everyone waited for the double troubles to walk in. The minutes ticked by getting more and more uncomfortable. The front door swung open and Finn fell down face first into the ground with two back pack sized bags of candy on his back. He groans, the twins rush in and scream that they are home at the top of their lungs. When no one answers they narrow their eyes. Looking at each other for a moment using their twin talk through their brains, they immediately start searching the house. 

Once they find the first person, Remus who sneezed from behind the couch everyone jumps out and surprises them. They scream and cling to Remus who can’t stop laughing. When he stands up the kids are still clinging to him, he isn’t even holding them, they are just gripping him that tightly. 

Finn eventually gets help standing up and looks exhausted, Leo showers him in kisses and Logan hugs him tight enough to pop his back. 

As per usual Ink And Leo are the last to give gifts.

Ink hands them both piercing vouchers at her shop, ever since Logan and Sirius got their ears pierced they wanted to do the same. Otto just wanted one while Olive wanted both. They were hopping around so excited already planning to get them done tomorrow. Ink smiles and leans back into June, as the kids run around them.

Leo straight up just gave them new skates since they have outgrown their others. Olive is the most excited because she has been watching Kuny and Logan like a hawk on the ice, she is learning how to fight and skate aggressively which is slightly worrying for a five year old. But she can hold her own against stupid people who like to tell her she is a girl and can’t do boy things. 

They have had to pull her away from a couple people. She started therapy a week later.

The rest of the night went smoothly and to make this a great night, Ink let the kids pick where they wanted to stay. Otto chose Sirius and Remus while Olive , of course, chose Kuny and Nado. 

July 31st 2022

They were at the rink this year for their sixth birthday, and boy were they tearing up the ice. They had mini pick up games with the kids (minus Otto). They had races and even limbo. It was nice and cool inside compared to the more warm but not hot compared to NOLA outside. 

This was also the birthday when Otto told Leo he wanted to try figure skating. Leo smiled so big at him and nodded.

“I think that's a great idea.”

Otto was all smiles the rest of the day talking about the cool moves he saw on tv at the last winter olympics. He said he wanted to skate to fast music instead of the slow pretty music. He wanted to dance to hard rock and controversial music because he's a rebel. 

Olive was still trying to decide if she wanted to be a winger or a defense player for hockey, but she loved hockey so much. She would watch any hockey game and would beg her dad to let her come to practice with him.

Finn and Logan found it amusing until she would get frustrated and start crying.  

The twins were a little sad when they found out they couldn’t invite their school friends to 

Their party because no one knew who their parents were yet. It put a damper on things a bit but the kids loved the team so they didn’t mind too much. Especially when Regulus showed up.

Since Reg and Leo were such good friends he would babysit the twins every once in a while and they all got on so well, almost like siblings. Olive would talk about anything and everything with him while Otto just cuddled up to him. Reg almost replaced Kun in Olive's eyes but she would never give him up. She would remind him every time she saw Kuny.

The rink was their presents from Leo this year.

Ink gave them plane tickets to come and visit her new shop opening up in New York with her. They always felt at home in the tattoo shop. There are literally pictures of one of the twins in a sling around Ink as she would tattoo when they were much younger. 

July 31st 2023

The twins didn’t want a birthday party this year, yes they still loved the team, but they just wanted dinner with their family. Very mature for small children. They picked the food and helped make it while Logan and June set the table and Finn and Ink playfully argue about which tv show they should put on. Olive was mixing something in a bowl with Otto when the arguing stopped, they had landed on a really old episode of spongebob and agreed this is what they would watch. Logan and June just watched them lovingly.

“What’s on your mind, Sugarbug?” Leo noticed her staring at Finn and Ink with her think face on. She looks up at him and leaves Otto to finish mixing the mashed potatoes. She looks up at her dad.

“Why don’t we have a normal family? I went to my friend Sam’s house and they only had one mom and one dad.” Leo was obviously stunned for a moment, seeing Otto nod in agreement with Olive he leans against the counter. He knew he would have to have this conversation someday but he didn’t expect it when they were seven. 

“We aren’t a normal family. We are interesting and fun, I mean how many kids do you think have five people to take care of them.” He smiles at them but only gets a slight shrug from Olive, Otto nods a little but not very committed. “We can talk about it more at bedtime, okay?” He pushed her hair behind her ear, she looks up at him with those giant blue eyes and he wonders if she get bullied because she can’t talk about her parents. “Let’s have a good time eating with just family. If I remember correctly there is an ice cream cake in the freezer.” 

That perks them up. Once everything is made and settled they start to eat. Leo keeps an eye on the kids throughout the meal and sees them relax halfway through the meal. He needs to talk to Ink about how to explain their situation properly.

All the twins wanted for gifts there year was a night with just Ink and Leo… and a new monster truck toy that you control with a remote so they could run over all their Barbie's.

[feverinfeveroutfic]

chapter twenty five: house of mirrors

Sam and Joey stood side by side to each other as they watched Ronnie and his band go forth on that stage. His voice, much like Joey's, soared high and out into the black sky overhead. He really was like a wizard, a man who crafted potions for the world of metal and saved them for the only special ones of the grand scheme of things. She touched the pendant upon her chest and she closed her eyes and she took in the sounds before her. Testament had gone off into the trees behind them, but she was more focused on the things going on before her and next to her.

She was at a heavy metal show that took place in front of a castle, and she stood next to Joey all the while.

That castle to the right, right behind the stage all the while. If only there was a way inside of there.

The castle needed a moat of sorts, and a way down to the water from the front door as well. A moat and a stream of its own so she and Joey could go swimming about in there together. She pictured herself laying on her back down by the water's edge as Joey took to it for himself. They could have their own palace, their own place together in those woods and they would have no one else who could bother them because she was queen and he had made himself her king.

She envisioned herself in a big ballroom gown and Joey himself in the fanciest of tuxedos. He stood there at the altar with his hands cupped before him, and their rings right inside of his palms. She gave her hair a toss back and she realized that it had been styled up into a snug beehive upon the crown of her head. She glanced down at the white lace gloves upon her hands and she knew that she had been given the ultimate wedding for herself as well as Joey. He stood there before her, with his inky black curls nicely combed back from the sides of his face, and his bangs tufted up from his forehead. His brown eyes as deep and rich as the earth, as the deadly nightshade that brought him forth onto the earth itself.

Deadly nightshade. Born out of the plant on the Iroquois grounds.

He lifted the black and white lace veil from her face and he showed her a little smile.

He was in love with her. He was in love with her and now they were about to make it official between the two of them.

She lifted the bouquet of flowers before her: a cluster of beautiful pearly white and deep black carnations the size of her fist. White and black. She turned her head and there was Alex, there in the row before her with his black hair nicely combed and dangled down over his shoulders, and his arms folded across his chest. He bowed his head a bit and he gazed down to the cold stone floor beneath him.

“Please don't unwrite me,” he begged to her in a small voice: a small enough voice to be heard despite the noise of the crowd. Sam opened her mouth to say something back to him, but Alex stood up and he walked out of there with a pained look on his boyish face.

“Alex—” she called after him. “Alex!”

He paid no attention to her. He just kept on walking with that inky black hair streamed behind him.

Sam returned to Joey and the rings cradled in his hands. Those dark lips in that warm little smile. He clinched the barren of the two and then took her hand with his free one: he slid on the diamond ring for her and she swallowed.

“You may now kiss the bride,” said the priest next to them. Joey leaned forward and kissed her lips, which thus sealed their fate together. He led her back down the steps, past her parents and everyone else in the audience. She hadn't even met his own parents at that moment, but she strode past them as they welcomed her into the family.

She was a Belladonna now. A new sprout of deadly nightshade for all the world to see for themselves. Misty eyed and barefoot all the while, and without a shred of irony either. Her whole life now revolved around him.

And their children.

Their children.

She swore that Joey didn't want children. But by some black magic, she found herself big and heavy with their spawn. The throes of giving birth. The rite of passage into being a mother. All the blood, all the agony, all the tearing flesh, all the pain; the entire transformation, all for bringing a new life into the world. A new series of lives. She couldn't imagine it, or she could but it ached her to imagine it. She wished to think about the wedding again, but it was too late at that point.

Then there came holding onto the pile of jaded flesh, what was left of her body. Joey not wanting to touch it or give her what she wanted anymore; and his long black curls shorn away into something that she didn't want to imagine. His venom gone. His inability to go out with Anthrax again, just like what happened to Louie.

Exactly what happened to Louie.

“You've got red eyes all the time now,” Joey would say to her all the time now. “All that's happened to you, Sam—I wish I could do something.” She watched him walk out of that door again, and for all she knew he was going to visit Zelda, or worse: her mother. It made no sense.

“Huh?” She shook her head and she realized she had returned to the stage next to Ronnie and his band. Joey was still right next to her, but that time he had a concerned look on his face.

“D'you hear what I said?” he asked her.

“I'm afraid not,” she confessed.

“I said you're gonna haveta take the red eye in a bit,” he told her. “Red eye back to the States 'cause we leave, too.”

“Oh. Oh!”

“Ronnie's gonna do 'Man on the Silver Mountain' here and then I'll walk ya back to the hotel.”

The look of concern turned back into that lopsided little smile on his round little face. She brought her attention back to the stage, where Ronnie stood there before his microphone stand and his arms held out on either side of him as if he served as Jesus on a cross. His long dark curls at the back of his head dangled down like the mane of the biggest boldest noble horse in existence. His white leather jacket shone under the bright rainbow colored lights over them.

Joey put his arm around her and held her close to his body as if she was in fact his girlfriend for real at that point. Sam kept her eye on Ronnie while he crooned out to the crowd before him. It was hard to imagine Bon Jovi following up with this big powerful voice. She then realized where Joey pulled a great deal of inspiration from, even if he never admitted it to her right away.

The rainbow colors all around them. The darkness beyond. She turned to him with her eyebrows raised.

“I want to paint you for real now,” she begged to him over the sound barrier that formed all around them.

“On a better canvas, I assume?” he teased her.

“Of course!”

Ronnie put his arms up and let out the strongest note in the form of the loudest howl she had ever heard a singer do before. Joey even gaped at him.

“Wow!” Dan exclaimed from right behind them. Ronnie then stood back and jumped in the air in the form of a high karate kick. The man really was a wizard.

Sam raised her arms and clapped hard for him.

“Thank you, England!” he declared. “Have a good night and don't stay up too late—”

He bowed back into the shadows on the other side of the stage; Sam felt something hold onto her arm.

“C'mon, Sam I am—”

She followed Joey past Frank, Dan, and Charlie into the darkness once again, back towards the tent and the trees.

“You got your guitar with you?” she asked him once the whirring in her ears started to subside away.

“It's back at the room,” he assured her once they cleared the tent. That little pathway amongst the trees. They were literally right there by the road: she thought of Alex as he saw them making out there under the trees. She wanted to explain to him, but she also wanted to see him again.

But there were so many things she wanted to do with Joey as well.

“There's of course, the real thing I wanna do with you,” she added as he moved a tree branch out of the way for her.

“What's that?” He lingered closer to her, such that he almost nudged her right off of the pathway.

“And I hope Bel can show me a thing or two about it this upcoming quarter here—glass.”

“Glass? You wanna blow me into glass?” That coaxed a laugh out of her but then she straightened herself out.

“No, I just think of those stained glass windows Marla and I saw on the first day of school—these big stained glass windows in the front wing of the school. I just pictured myself making a window in your likeness, kind of like how I made that one drawing of you in order for me to get into school.”

“Oh, I see. You wanna like translate it over into the realm of stained glass.”

“Exactly!”

“Hmmm...”

They reached the street once again and they stood there with a bunch of dead leaves strewn out on the sidewalk before them. The black sky hung high over their heads like a velvety tapestry.

“It might definitely have to be sump'n to set aside for a weekend,” Joey confessed in a low voice.

“Yeah, and you have to got to sit still for me, too,” Sam insisted.

“Well—look at it this way. You've already seen me nude twice—and you've had your lips locked onto me, too. You've seen me as I am already. It's just a matter of doing it for a simple li'l sketch. I assume that's what you do.”

“Just makes sense. I mean, Belinda works on glass projects all the time and she constantly staggers them, too. They're just time consuming for her.”

They lingered there on the sidewalk for a few seconds more before Sam moved in closer to him. Despite having smoked a little bit from a joint, despite having performed before thousands of people, despite having made out with her in the trees, and despite standing there on the side of the stage for Ronnie, he still smelled excellent. Fresh out of the shower and fresh with a spritz of cologne. Marla and Belinda themselves were back there somewhere to see Bon Jovi but she fixed more on the man on the silver mountain right there next to her. That daydream was still so fresh in her mind, and all it took was the view of the castle right behind the stage.

“So—you don't want kids,” she muttered to him.

“Nah.” He froze right in his tracks. “Why? Do you?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I dunno, to be honest.”

“Well, understand, you're not my girlfriend.”

“What if I was, though?” she asked him, to which he knitted his eyebrows together.

“What if you were?”

“If I was your girlfriend, would you want kids with me?”

He nibbled on his bottom lip at that. “And why are you asking me this?”

“Well, 'cause Aurora had that little bit of a pregnancy scare and well—if I'm honest, I'm just curious about it now.”

“Oh, I see, kind of a, uh—” He cleared his throat. “—an aware of yourself kind of thing.”

“Exactly, right! Becoming more aware of my own body. So, if I was your girlfriend, would you want kids with me?”

He nibbled on his bottom lip again, but he never said anything back to that.

Instead, he strode forward to the other side of the street, and those black curls streamed behind his head. Sam followed right behind him; she clutched onto the bracelet he had given her before the show. She looked over to the front window of the hotel: inside there, Alex had taken his seat on a stool and sprawled a book across the table before him. Joey held the door for her as she recalled what had happened in the trees before Ronnie's set.

“Joey, I'll meet you back at the room,” she told him. “I gotta do something real quick.”

“Bring back ice, too?” he asked her, still with that crooked grin on his face.

“Of course!”

He then walked on to the corridor, towards his room. Sam turned back to Alex, who looked as though he had fallen asleep sitting up, but then he raised his gaze in her direction. Still serious and with a bit of pain in his eyes. She walked on over to him and he raised his head a little bit to her.

“Are you okay?” she asked him in a soft voice.

“Yeah, I just—I wasn't really expecting to see you with Joey in the trees,” he confessed to her in a near whisper even though there was no one else in there.

“It's okay—I just—kind of sort of lost a bet.”

“You lost a bet?” he chuckled.

“Yeah. It's—It's kind of a long story.” She knew what he meant by it, but she couldn't help but feel that she had crossed a line. He and Joey didn't like each other, and it was all the more obvious now with her having softened things with Alex. There had to be something to rectify it more.

“What'cha readin'?”

“Do you know the story of the Wandering Jew?” he asked her. “Or—as it's often referred to as—the Flying Dutchman?”

“It's a—It's a ship, isn't it?”

“The Flying Dutchman is. The Wandering Jew is a man—banished to walk the earth for eternity. Or at least Jesus comes down during the Second Coming, I don't really know the full details if I'm perfectly honest. But the Flying Dutchman is the same story, but with a ghost ship instead. It's what I'm reading about here, and I mention this because sometimes I feel like I'm actually the Wandering Jew. The little Jew boy meant to walk the earth for eternity.”

“Why's that?” she asked him. He sighed through his nose and he bowed his head. He never replied to that, but she had a feeling that she had hit a nerve with him at some point during that weekend. She glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one was eavesdropping on them. So much left unsaid between the two of them, and his seeing Joey in the trees there with her only left even more unsaid.

She then cleared her throat before she said anything more to him.

“So—what'd you think of those pen and ink drawings that Charlie had mentioned to you?”

“Oh, those were cool,” he replied with a nod of his head; he then closed that book and gave his jet black a little toss back. “Do you know the artist at all?”

She shook her head. On one hand, she couldn't hardly believe that she had just lied to Alex not once, but twice. But then again, she had her own problems to deal with, especially with her getting back to Joey soon enough. He squinted his eyes at her as if he knew something that she didn't.

“Well, I hope you can find the artist soon because I kind of want to see more from that person now,” he confessed to her.

“I hope I can, too,” she assured him. He kept his eyes fixed on her for what felt like more than a minute.

She thought back to that drawing in her journal, the one of the mysterious man from her dreams and the streak in his hair. Those deep eyes had something more to them, something more that he wasn't telling her.

“Listen. About Joey—” But then he raised a hand to her and he shook his head.

“It's alright,” he assured her in a low voice. “Sometimes things just happen.” And yet she could make out the absolute pain in that boy's eyes, that sad disappointed look in those deep eyes. Her own eyes looked up to that little plume of gray over his brow, once a little sliver of a pearl now a plume: she never realized as to how feathery his hair was, feathery and light like the wisps that followed the Wandering Jew everywhere he went.

She thought about that daydream she had had before, and the look of pain on his face there.

“Are you guys gonna be following them around more on their tour of Europe?” she asked him, and he shrugged his shoulders.

“I don't really know, to be perfectly honest,” he confessed. “I might just take the red eye home, or the next flight tomorrow morning, I dunno. I don't know what's going on. I heard Chuck and Eric talking about it, but who knows really.”

He ran his fingers through his dark hair and that streak glimmered a bit all the while. He then scooped up the book and stood to his feet, and towered before her all the while.

“So—keep an eye out for that live album?” she recalled, and he nodded his head.

“Yeah.”

But her attempt was useless. Even though the two of them didn't really know each other, Sam could see it in his eyes and the way in which he walked back to the other side of the hotel. It was as if she had betrayed a good friend. He stopped in the middle of the floor at one point so he could hitch up those jeans but Sam knew what he was really doing. He kept on walking to the other wing of the hotel until he disappeared behind the corner.

Sam turned her attention back to her side of the hotel, where Joey awaited her and where she had gather her things so she, Marla, and Belinda could head on back to New York City. She had no idea what Aurora and Emile planned to do for themselves, but as she gathered a small cup of ice for Joey, she realized that she didn't really care, either. She cared more about Alex than she did them, and Aurora was her best friend to boot. But she and Emile had gotten drunk and did the very thing that she wanted Joey to stop doing, and as a result, they missed that show back there. They missed Joey's grand performance on the guitar and Anthrax's new chapter as a quartet, and up to that point, Aurora had been faithful in going to work and going to shows with Sam and Marla.

Like she had skated by without having to do anything there in England. The very thing Alex disliked about Joey, as if he himself had skirted by as well.

It was all so round about and like such a house of mirrors that by the time she arrived back at her room, and there was Joey there on the edge of the bed with no shirt on, that she almost burst out laughing at him.

He glanced back at her with a flick of his hair and that lopsided grin plastered across his face as if it had genuinely became a part of his make up.

“The next time we get together, we oughtta go long,” he told her as she shut the door behind her. Sam sauntered over to him and handed him the cup of ice.

“We'll head on back to my parents' house soon enough,” she assured him.

“I do hope so. I really wanna be at your folks' place again. Just so long as your mom doesn't hit on me again.”

“I'll get to the bottom of that,” she told him. “Positive.”

“Just how I'll get to the bottom of your bottom?”

She scoffed and then rolled her eyes at him.

“You really wanna go there?” she demanded. “Right now?”

“While we still have time. Marla and Belinda aren't back yet, either.”

“True.”

“So, c'mon.” He beckoned her. “Let's finish what we started in the woods.”

“Finish the wood in the woods?”

“See the forest for the trees and see the world as you please.” He then snapped his fingers. “Ooh, that's cool. Write that down when you're on the plane.”

He leaned back onto the bed with the cup of ice right next to him. She hovered right above him and her hair dangled right over his face.

“C'mon, give it to me,” he begged her.

“Just so long as I don't have to call you 'daddy' like Frankie does.”

“Nah—I'd have to wear that fucking puffy as hell shirt that he's got.”

“Puffy as hell shirt? How exactly is hell puffy?”

“It'll be puffy as your snatch is about to be—” He showed her his tongue as he undid his jeans for her. “—I—kind of need a little bit below the equator if ya don't mind.”

She hesitated as it stood there right underneath her. She had touched Cliff before, and she had gone a little bit there for Joey, but something didn't really add up to her. She just looked on at it as if it was part of his body: it was part of his body, nothing more. But he wanted it, and he wanted it from her in particular, to finish what they had started back there.

Thus she bowed forward and put her lips down. Salty. Such that it made her throat dry and parched, more so than the midori sour she and Marla had had the two days before. But he smiled and groaned in his throat at the feeling. She held onto his hips to better steady himself.

“Can ya feel it?” he croaked.

“Yes—” She ran her tongue along the taut skin, but she wasn't feeling much of anything on her end. If anything, she was thinking about the encounter she had had with Cliff in the subway. They were in the dark and yet she put her hand down his jeans to feel him. Maybe it was the darkness and maybe it was the fact that she had done it to Cliff, but the empty feeling only persisted once she closed her eyes. For a second, she swore she was back with him again, especially since Joey's heavy breathing only added to it.

“Cliff—” she whispered under her breath.

“Huh?” Joey breathed back to her.

“Joey—” she whispered back to him, and she returned her lips onto his tight skin once again. He gasped at the sensation, and then she sank her teeth down. He grunted at that feeling.

“You don't like that?” she asked him in a broken voice, and he shook his head.

“Okay—but you want to know something, though?”

“What's that?” He propped himself up on his elbows for a better look at her.

“I can so get used to this,” she whispered to him.

“You wanna know sump'n?” he whispered back to her, complete with that slithering tongue about the edges of his teeth.

“What's that?”

“I can, too.”

She moved herself down onto her forearms so she lay right next to his hip.

“What're you saying?”

“Well, you're blowing me right now,” he pointed out. “Blowing me after you suggested a bit of glass on your part. I've become a part of your world now, Sam. I really do.”

“It's funny I—I feel like I'm part of your world now,” she confessed.

“Would you be my girlfriend?” he asked her in a small voice.

“Well, I'm here now, aren't I?”

He clicked his tongue. “Yeah.”

“Then the answer is 'yes', Joey," she replied without hesitation; suddenly Alex's reaction to their being in the woods meant nothing. "I'll be your girlfriend. Would you like something else?”

He looked down at himself, and that lopsided grin turned into a thoughtful little smile.

“Nah, I think I'm good, to be honest. For now, anyways. I've got a tour to do the next bunch'a dates.”

“And I start school soon.”

“And you start school again soon, right.”

“Sam?” Marla called from down the hall.

“Time to head on back home, babe.” Joey flashed her a wink at that.

[dakotacrisis]

Deal’s End

Marinette is working on an occult design for Juleka when a stray dodgeball hits her in the face. She bleeds all over her design and through this accidentally summons the demon whose sigil she had been sketching. The demon now cannot leave until a deal has been struck. Unfortunately for both of them Marinette isn’t ready to give up her soul that easily.

I have no self control! Got this idea after seeing a one-time-i-dreamt post about accidentally summoning a demon by drawing pentagrams. There are going to be more chapters of this. Nothing too long, right now I have it plotted out at about twelve so it should go by pretty quickly. Also there are no kwamis or powers in this Felinette AU. Happy reading!

(Read on AO3)

---

There are some deals that should never be struck. No matter how tempting they sound. It can only end up hurting you. There was a saying, if it sounds too good to be true then it is. It was this frame of mind that Marinette held. She would admit she was an optimist but she never once pretended that her dreams could come true with a single wish. Anything in this life, she would have to work for and earn.

Marinette’s dream was to one day grow up to be a famous fashion designer. At fifteen though it was still only a dream but she worked to build her skills and name as much as she could. Taking on commissions and such were just one way hone her abilities. And hopefully one day she would see the fruits of her labor.

At the moment Marinette sat off to the side of the open courtyard where her classmates were playing dodgeball. She was sitting out due to a twisted ankle she incurred running to get to class on time after sleeping in. While she did like a good game she was more than content to sit off to the side and work on a commission for her friend Juleka.

Juleka had always been a more gothic personality and Marinette had known it was only a matter of time until she came to her for something occult-ish. The design was nothing major. A couple patches that Juleka could put on her bag with satanic looking sigils and pentagrams and stuff on them. Personally Marinette steered clear of occult stuff. She liked the aesthetic but the actual practice gave her the heebie jeebies. Oh you’re going to this abandoned asylum and where a bunch of people died and playing with a ouija board? Hard pass!

Right now Marinette was trying to sketch the sigil Juleka gave her in her notebook. Different demons had different sigils and Juleka wanted one that wasn’t hugely known like Lucifer or Leviathan. It was either smart thinking or ‘I liked this demon before you’ flexing.

And done! The sigil kinda looked like an abstract butterfly now that Marinette finalized it. Now she just had to work this design onto a patch and--

“Marinette!” Someone shouted.

Marinette looked up just in time to see that bright red rubber ball flying straight at her. She can only blink before it smacks her right in the face with a resounding P’TANG! Or maybe that’s what the noise was. All Marinette could hear was the ringing in her ears as her brain tried to catch up with the hit it just took.

“Holy crap! Marinette, are you alright?” Her friend Alya ran over to check on her. “Kim! What the hell was that?”

“Sorry! I was aiming at Alix but it missed and...oh shit, your nose is bleeding.”

“It is?” Marinette touched her nose and winced. A little smear of blood rubbed off on her hand. She stared down at her notebook and groaned when she saw the splattering of blood on the page. “Perfect.” She ripped the ruined page out and used it stunt the flow of blood.

“Do you need to go to the nurse?” Alya asked, helping Marinette to her feet.

“No, I think I just need to clean up.” Marinette started limping towards the bathroom. “If I see it bruising I’ll head to the nurse.”

The bell for the next class rung and Marinette told Alya to let Ms. Bustier know she was going to be late.

With that Marinette walked into the bathroom and dropped the paper in the trash. She grabbed a couple paper towels to wipe the blood off. The bleeding had been short lived but god did her face hurt. She would probably end up down at the nurse for an ice pack if nothing else. First her ankle now her nose, what else could she hurt before fourth period?

She bent closer to the sink to wash the last of the blood away. When she came back up to dry her face she noticed someone in the mirror behind her. She gave a started yelp and turned around to see who was there.

At first her brain tried to say it was Adrien but the boy standing behind her but the sharp red suit told her different. “Uh hi?” Marinette grabbed a paper towel to wipe her face, “You’re in the girl’s restroom.”

“So it seems.” the boy nodded. The guy was the definition of well-groomed. Perfectly styled blonde hair, not a crease in his clothes, clear skin, and polished shoes. He looked around her age, maybe a little older it was hard to tell. He had one of those faces. And currently is was fixed in a bored expression as he calmly regarded the alarmed girl in front of him.

“What are you doing here?” Marinette asked.

“You summoned me.” Red suit boy replied.

“No. I didn’t ask for anyone.” Marinette started to inch towards the door. “And if I was going to ask for help I would have gotten one of my friends, not...whoever you are.”

“Let me be more clear.” Red suit boy pulled out a wad of paper that Marinette hadn’t seen him holding before. He unfurled it to show the paper Marinette had ripped out of her sketch book and now covered in her blood. “You see this mark you drew here? That’s my mark. See the blood washed all over it? That’s your blood. Ergo, you summoned me.”

The pieces started to fit together but Marinette wasn’t liking the picture. “Are you trying to tell me that you are some kind of demon that I summoned by having a nosebleed on my sketch book?”

“Yes. Exactly that.”

“Nope.” She shook her head, “I think I have a concussion. Yes. That blow to the head created you and I should be getting to the nurse.”

Marinette quickly rushed out of the restroom and started making her way to the nurse. She was down the hall towards the nurse’s station when she saw red suit demon boy in front of her again. “But--” she pointed back towards the restroom, “But you were--how did--?”

“I would really like if you would stop trying to rationalize me away and accept what you have done.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Obviously,” he gestured to himself, “you did. Or else I wouldn’t be here.”

“I am in too much pain to be dealing with this.” Marinette turned to go back to class. She needed an ice pack but she didn’t want to get closer to the literal demon at the other end of the hall. “Go away and leave me alone!”

He spawned right in front of her again causing her to quickly back up to avoid running into him. That same bored expression lingered on his face. “I’m not leaving.”

“Why not? I didn’t mean to summon you. I cannot believe that something like this is even happening. So please, go back to whatever hellhole you crawled out of and leave me alone.”

“Would if I could but I unfortunately cannot.” Demon boy started walking next to her as she ascended the stairs back to class. “You summoned me and so I am bound to you until I have fulfilled my duty.”

“And what duty is that?”

“To strike a deal.”

“Too bad I’m not in the habit of making deals with demons.”

“Not many people are. You’d be surprised how little demons are called upon nowadays. Back in the olden times there wasn’t a single weekend where I could--”

“That all sounds like a lovely history lesson but I have literature class to get back to. Bye.” Marinette strolled into the classroom and firmly closed the door behind her. She sat down at her desk and let out a sigh of relief.

“You alright? Did you go to the nurse?” Alya whispered.

“I’m fine.” Marinette pulled out her notes. “I’m having a long day is all.”

She looked up to see where they were in the lesson and nearly fell out of her chair when she saw demon boy sitting on the teacher’s desk. He was staring directly at her. Marinette gazed around the room but no one else seemed to notice he was there.

“Are you sure you don’t need to go home early? You seem really spaced.” Alya asked, worried.

“It’s going to be a long day.” Marinette muttered, glaring at the unbothered demon.

Marinette’s gaze never left the demon during the entire class. She tried to focus on Ms. Bustier but her attention kept being drawn back to him. He would walk around the room peering at the other students and messing with the lights so they flickered incessantly. She shot him a dirty look which made him stop and he instead started pestering her by talking over Ms. Bustier’s lesson. When class was finally over Marinette told her friends to head on to lunch without her. She needed to have a word with her unwanted guest.

“That was so boring.” The demon boy sighed, “How can you cope with that every day?”

“Why won’t you leave?” Marinette snapped.

“I told you before. I can’t leave until we make a deal. All of which I would have explained from the beginning if you hadn’t insisted on trying to get away from me.”

“You’re a demon! Of course I was trying to get away from you!” Marinette seethed, “Also, am I correct in assuming that no one else can see you but me?”

“Yes. Why? Didn’t like me attending class with you?”

“No. Oddly enough I didn’t.” Marinette sat back down at her desk. It was a good thing no one was here or else she would look insane talking to thin air. “Okay, you’re a demon and you’re bound to me to make a deal. What exactly does that mean?”

“Oh, you’re actually going to let me explain are you?”

“Talk now or else I’ll get a spray bottle full of holy water to spritz you with.”

“Someone’s touchy.” The demon boy shrugged. “I’ll forego all the theatrics and pretty words since I would like to get out of here myself. I am bound to strike a deal with you and I cannot leave until one has been made. Think of it as a wish. Whatever your heart desires I will provide in return for a certain price.”

“Am I right in assuming this price is my eternal soul?”

“I mean depending on what you ask for, yes. Not all deals are equivalent to your soul. Most are but those are usually just the popular ones. Fame, wealth, revenge, etcetera. So tell me, what is it you want most...Magdalene?”

“Marinette.”

“Right. What would you like?”

“I’m not going to make a deal with you.”

“Yes you are. Or else I’ll never leave. So tell me, what do you want?”

“I told you I am not going to make a deal with you! I am not giving up my soul or anything else for what you’re offering.”

“Can we please skip this bit?” He rolled his eyes, “I’ve seen enough people try to hold out from making deals to know that you’re going to end up caving anyway. Now tell me what it is your selfish little heart desires.”

“No!”

“Come on!” he groaned, “I said please. Stop trying to think you can wiggle your way out of this by being stubborn.”

“I’m not making a deal!” Marinette huffed and strode out of the room. “And you can go back to hell!”

He fell into step beside her as she limped her way up to the cafeteria. “How many times do I have to say that I’m not leaving until you get it?”

“I really don’t like you.” She grumbled.

“And here I thought we were getting along so well.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and whispered in her ear, “Come on love, there has to be something you want. An impossible dream you want to achieve? Revenge on someone who did you wrong? The love of someone far from your reach? Do you not have any goals in life?”

“I have dreams and goals and people I like that don’t like me back but I am not about to cheat to get any of them.” she pushed his arm off of her. “Whatever I get in this life I will earn honestly in my own way in my own time.”

“Satan give me strength, you’re one of those people?” The demon sighed loudly. “You know that all this hard work you’re putting in will most likely go nowhere right? Those dreams that you think are so easy to achieve if you just put in enough elbow grease and strive forward with a can do attitude will crash and burn. Then you end up in the position you are right now. Looking for an easy route to everything you want.”

He stopped her, tickling a finger under her chin. She hadn’t noticed it before but his eyes were grey. Unnaturally so. They almost looked like sparkling silver in the fluorescent light. He grinned with teeth that seemed a tad too sharp to be human. “All you have to do is ask for it and I can make it so.”

“Not today.” she spat, “Not ever.” She walked around him and continued on with her head held high.

The rest of the day her demon lurked in the corner. He wasn’t causing mischief but his eyes never left her the entire time. She could feel them on her and it sent a shiver up her spine to think about.

When the day finally ended she booked it back to her house and locked herself in her room. Her gaze swept the room but he was nowhere to be seen. Hours passed and still she had seen neither hide nor hair of the demon that had been plaguing her. Perhaps it was all just a stress induced hallucination. It seemed that the second she got home and took some medicine for her aching face he ceased to be. It felt safe to deem this whole thing a weird experience and lay it to rest.

Relieved that the ordeal was over she started getting ready for bed. After today she felt like she deserved a little pampering and ran a hot bubble bath complete with some scented candles and her favorite face mask.

She sunk down into the water with a happy sigh. Her eyes sliding closed as she relished in the warmth. Yeah, she needed this.

Then she felt it. A shiver down her spine. She opened her eyes and had to bite her tongue to keep from screaming. Her demon was sitting on her toilet staring at her with that same bored expression. “What the hell--!”

“Thought you got rid of me?” he smirked, “I wanted to see how you acted when you thought I wasn’t here. It’s a nice set up you got here, what are the candles? Honey blossom?”

“Get out!”

“Why?”

“Cause I’m in the bath!” she curled into herself thankful that the bubbles held cover her modesty.

“So?”

“What do you mean, so? I’m naked!”

“And what? You think it is anything special? Do you have any idea how old I am? You are certainly not the first naked body I’ve seen and I doubt you’ll be the last.”

“I don’t care! Get out!”

That little grin on his face grew wider and he slid off the toilet to sit at the edge of the tub. “You know, if you really want me to leave you could always make a deal with me. Then I would have to go.”

“I already told you my answer. I will not make a deal with a perverted demon like you!”

“Oh please, I’ve met Asmodeus. Trust me when I say I am nowhere near the most perverted demon out there. That being said,” He stared more closely at the bubbles around her and with a snap of his fingers they all popped, “Doesn’t mean I can’t still watch you squirm.”

Marinette quickly reached for her towel and wrapped it around herself. She didn’t care if she was sitting buck naked in tepid water with a glob of pink clay on her face. She was not going to give him the satisfaction. She’d wait until the water turned ice cold if that’s what it took.

She can only wait as the minutes tick by and the demon plays his jokes to try and annoy her into making a deal with him. Still she remains steadfast until he eventually gets bored and leaves. Quickly she rinses the mask off and crawls out of the bath and throws on her robe.

She peers around her room to make sure he isn’t lurking in the shadows before getting dressed. Even then she did as much as she could with her robe still on so he couldn’t pop in while she was putting on her panties.

The thought that the demon is still nearby waiting and possibly watching her kept her up late into the night until her eyes couldn’t stay open anymore and she drifted off to sleep. Whoever this demon was he did not have a single idea who he was dealing with. If he thought some juvenile pranks and an invasion of her privacy was enough to get her to bend then he was sorely mistaken. Marinette was nothing if not stubborn and this demon was about to learn exactly that.

---

(2)

[gothamdetected-a]

multiverse.

i know what you’re thinking. sim are you absolutely fucking insane, don’t even TRY to tackle this one. you’re right i am insane. and yes i am still going to try and tackle a meta about DC multiverses HOWEVER, to give myself on shred of sanity on this treacherous journey, i will say that this is mainly going to be about the multiverse from a bruce perspective. this ride is a batman focused train i’m afraid. also i want to state that this is by no means a perfect explanation – i’m a) trying to keep it simple and b) still am lost on parts of the timeline myself so. its what i can offer.

ok so, originally NCP, or the national comics publication (who will one day become DC), wrote their golden age heroes on an earth now designated as earth-2. in the 30s, just before the war, comic books absolutely exploded as a media format, and a bunch of companies all jumped the gun on creating superheroes. many of DCs most endearing and recognisable heroes were created all the way back then, however many of them also are not quite who you will recognise as the character today. hal jordan wasn’t green lantern, but was instead a man called alan scott, jay garrick was the flash instead of barry allen etc etc. don’t worry though! batman is still batman, and has been bruce wayne since 1939. earth-2 batman, as he will come to be known, is a bright kind of guy found on technicolour pages with a cute lil robin by his side – there is a reason for this. the war. literally NCP said we cant be sending out dark and gritty comics to people dying in trenches so time to make it colourful and faintly ridiculous, and bruce wayne is a surprisingly optimistic guy for a man who watched his parents be slaughtered in front of him.

of course, by the 60s, NCP (who are also sort of known as NPP and really known by your average joe as superman-dc, based on their most successful comic runs) had realised their timelines were getting a bit squiggly for their golden age heroes, and most of them had been replaced out by their silver age counterparts anyway. so between 1961 and 1963, NCP start creating another “earth”, officially designated earth-1, which would become their main planet for all kinds of superhero shenanigans. the justice society of america becomes the justice league of america, and when you think of batman, you’re probably thinking of earth-1 batman. at least pre crisis. and, once they get taste for building whole new earths, we also get earth-3 (1964), or “opposite world”, where the good guys are bad guys, and batman is owlman and instead of the jla we have the crime syndicate of america.  

so sim, what other earths did dc come up with? well, i literally refuse to list them all because it was a multiverse and they did not slow down, but the ones that are most important to me are earth-5 where the only hero to live on this planet is bruce wayne/batman, and earth-89 where lois marries bruce instead of clark ahAHAHHAA. but i can tell you that pre-crisis there are 91 designated earths, and basically it could have gone on forever. there was an earth-c minus, earth-124.1, an earth where everyone was reptiles, honestly it was a MESS. and therein lies the problem.

now i’ve just used the term “pre-crisis”. what’s that, sim? maybe you’re not very familiar with comics, or with the recent dctv version of said comics, and so i will endeavour to explain one of the most brain numbing storylines that spans DC. also known as a retcon. see all these earths with their own histories and heroes and well everything really was becoming very inconvenient and meant a lot of world jumping and who can interact with who and everything was getting like spaghetti because they couldn’t calm down on the earth-building. so DC (who are officially DC at this point, 1977 babeyy), specifically a guy called marv wolfman (coolest name ever) who was sick of so many earths, comes up with the bright idea that will later form into a comic run called crisis on infinite earths (1985-1986). it was a serious crossover event, really considered by many to be the first of its kind. it sold extremely well, boosting dc’s flagging sales against it’s biggest rival, marvel. and as for the plot, it’s a bit convoluted but essentially some bloke turns up and starts to destroy all these worlds, and it becomes a race between the heroes and villains as to who can save/conquer the remaining earths that are left. although there are crises before and after this specific run, pre-crisis basically always refers to this particular crisis event, as it really shaped DC for the next 30 years.

for a while the retcon does an okay job of keeping the number of earths low. there’s still some earths that are considered non-continuous floating around, but mainly there’s just earth-1, which is now a merger of the most important “earths” that existed pre-crisis, and a way for all of DCs heroes to now be in one place and interact with each other. other earths at this point include;

earth-23 (1986) – a small pocket dimension

earth-17 (1990) – we don’t talk about this. honestly spare yourself and. don’t look. its horrific.

earth-27 (1990) – a historically divergent planet with a hero actually called vegetable man.

earth-85 (1987) – a hodgepodge of post-crisis characters live here, chillin

earth-988 (1990) – superboy is the only hero in this universe

the antimatter universe – all of pre-crisis’ earth-3 villains, including owlman, get shoved here for later use when dc need a couple of villains to come back.

and for a while all is well. then comes DC elseworlds (1989). which. you know. i love. it gave me victorian batman. pirate batman. caveman batman. vampire batman. frankenstein batman. terrorist batman fighting against russian!superman. they even gave me marvel crossovers, with captain america meeting batman. it was a glorious time. technically elseworlds is not considered canon, ran outside of canon as a way for writers to explore those wacky kind of worlds lost to the crisis, which is dumb because some of the plot lines are both hilarious and incredible. but the numbers started to get ridiculous again. most elseworlds are named after the year that the plot takes place in, so we get earth-1889, earth-1938 etc, but even more of them just seem to have random designations. i think by the time they reached earth-5050 they sort of knew that theyd fucked up again. we’ve had zero hour, we’ve got hypertime and kingdom come, and besides, its been a while since they had a good crossover, so by the time 2005 rolls around its time for crisis pt 2 (because dc love to use the word crisis for crossovers) or as it’s officially known infinite crisis. infinite crisis has an even more confusing plot involving a bunch of slightly nuts versions of characters escaping a pocket dimension, earths being created and then merged, and a rogue ai which batman made and then has to destroy because his own creation becomes too powerful etc etc. the only good thing to come out of it was earth-0, or bizarro world, because bizarro & batzarro are my babies. don’t worry though, this new set of earths won’t last long either, as in 2008 DC conclude their trilogy of crises with final crisis that featured one of the most important events in batman’s history – darkseid “killing” him. yes the quotations are important. i’ll leave you to infer what they mean.

so 3 crises later and everything is still just as messy as they’ve ever been and there’s 60 years worth of comic history being tangled about, and marvel had already established a very successful reboot in 2000, and anything marvel do, we can do better, so DC do their first, full and proper reboot. unlike retcons before it, which is where they retroactively try to fix what people already know and simplify timelines & earths, this is like someone shaking the etch-a-sketch and starting fresh. back in infinite crisis an arbitrary number was assigned to how many “earths” there could be – 52. and so in 2011, DC go hey that’s neat and create what becomes known as the new- or nu-52. heroes are given shiny new backstories, everything is streamlined and wonderful, sales rise, DC has a clean slate to build off again.

ha.

yeah that doesn’t happen.

this reboot, also known as flashpoint, due to it being spawned from another big ol’ crossover of the same name, shows barry allen trapped in an alternate universe where everything is not quite right – his mother is alive, superman is nowhere to be found and he doesn’t have his powers. worst of all thomas wayne is batman. yeah, batman’s dad is batman. thanks DC, i hate it. reverse-flash has tried to change history and stop the jla from ever being formed – le gasp. barry goes to fix it, merges three universes together – earth-0, which isn’t a bizarro world but now the “main" earth, also called new earth or prime earth (DC), earth-13 (vertigo) and earth-50 (wildstorm), but also causes 10 years to be “lost” to these characters. there are now 52 brand spanking new earths, each sitting in their own universe as part of the multiverse. no one remembers anything except barry. even for a reboot and convergence of DC’s franchises, it’s messy as fuck. and it goes to shit very very quickly. people don’t really like n-52. DC have cancelled everything, certain characters such as cassandra cain-wayne are fucking ERASED from existence, no one likes the new costume designs, its an absolute shit show and the plots get very confusing very quickly.

so what do DC do?

they reboot again. sigh.

only 5 years after the mess of nu-52, they produce DC rebirth, a new relaunch of all their famous runs. brainiac does some magic and collects a bunch of worlds together and magically we’re all going to forget the last 5 years of comic hell. it is a reboot to retcon flashpoint as though that never happened. yes, DC are actually retconning their own reboots. talk about sweeping it under the carpet. technically “rebirth” only ran for a year as a promotional thing for the reboot, before joining with the larger, now-singular DC universe, however everyone still calls it rebirth because if we don’t give these things names it will get even more fucking confusing than it already is. rebirth also still has 52 universes making up the DC multiverse, just to make things even more simple and easy to understand (DC what is it with 52. why 52.) although lots of the earths in this multiverse have been re-designated – eg. pre-crisis earth-31 was home to an aged batman who fakes his death to go train a bunch of new vigilantes (the dark knight returns), and now 31 is an apocalyptic wasteland or some shite. a lot of these earths were re-designated during the flashpoint/nu-52 era, and even though rebirth was supposed to erase that, DC have decided never mind we’ll keep it. there’s also 7 mysteriously undesignated earths – ooh spooky, they definitely won’t feature in the next major crossover. also for a multiverse with 52 universes, they sure do have more than 52 : there’s the microverse, a bunch of universes collectively called “the sphere of the gods” where apokalips and like, literal heaven & hell exist, an innerverse???, dreamworld, limbo, DC are taking the piss they only said there were 52 earths but that means they can make as many other shitty dimensions and pocket-universes as they please apparently. don’t even get me started on the source wall. for the most part the writers just. don’t acknowledge this and stick to the main prime earth. for the most part. thanks for throwing thomas wayne as batman back into the mix, rebirth.

so that’s the last of it, right sim? eh, almost. it should have been the last of it, really. and then geoff johns couldn't keep his mouth shut and produced possibly the worst comic in recent history, if not ever, doomsday clock. now doomsday clock is a nightmare for an impossibly long list of reasons that i won’t get into here because this isn’t a rant about why i think doomsday clock is the worst thing to ever happen to dc (although that’s a catchy title i should use that some day) - no, the reason i bring up doomsday clock is because. oh my god even saying this makes me sad. doomsday clock proves that the pre-crisis universes still exist and are still out there. somewhere. canonically. sim why is that sad i thought you liked everything pre-52. it’s sad because it means at any point now, DC could bring them back, ruin their own legacy, make everything even more confusing than it already is. i love pre-52 stuff but you gotta leave it alone. currently doomsday clock has only established that these universes exist as a way to honour every era of superman, because DC didn’t want to completly erase some of the incredible work and storylines put into him as a character. fine, fair enough. but it does leave the possibility that they will try and return to them too. comic book writers love doing funky story lines like that. they think they need to write something that’s never been done before and instead of coming up with something actually unique, they just poke around in the multiverse WHICH IS HOW WE ENDED UP WITH THIS AS A PROBLEM IN THE FIRST PLACE.

ahem.

hopefully this helped clarify some stuff for people, especially those folks who aren’t big comic fans/expereience dc through the DCEU or DCTV, when encountering rpers who say they base their characterisation off of, for example pre-n52/flashpoint comics, like myself.

oh, and thank you for coming to my ted sim talk.

[cheswirls]

tether notes 2/3

pt. 3

i mentioned this in the last part, but i used muroran as basis for veilstone, not abashiri. actually, if you want my opinion, i think shari, hokkaido, is a better depiction of veilstone than abashiri. mostly, i used muroran bc i could find pictures there that were more than just boat-icebreaker-drift ice-boat. abashiri is cold. and full of drift ice. if you need context, it’s level with toronto, canada. a pretty cold place to live. muroran is further south, and it’s also a port city, so i jus used that.

shari looks nicer, but it’s more into the hook of hokkaido (that piece on sinnoh map that jutts out right below battle zone) and not nestled into the mountains, so. mostly it was out.

makino’s cafe/bar is based on the diner in veilstone. so, walk in, counter bar to your left, tables to your right, possibly a happiny underfoot carrying trays of food. 

but, compared to the more rustic and colored veilstone, i wanted to depict more of hokkaido city here. so, more rundown, rusted due to sea breeze, older things without much repair. passable, sure, for daily life. but new and extravagant? no. far from.

if makino is so close with luffy, how come she doesn’t know sabo?

simple. she’s not close with luffy. makino has a fulltime job running a diner in veilstone, sinnoh. luffy grew up on the sevii islands, kanto. when he was in sinnoh, he was training with shanks. yeah, sure, they would come by for food, and makino is good friends with shanks, so of course she and luffy have a relationship. but, also at this point where shanks began to bring luffy around, instead of teaching him out in nowhere, sevii islands, they began to keep things secret. luffy was here “just visiting” to anyone who asks, but they wouldn’t seen him much around, not in the isolation shanks trained him in. also also at this point, because i derailed that sentence completely, ace and sabo were already out traveling. it just never came up. makino is friendly with luffy, she knows luffy, but she doesn’t know him, not really.

pokemon hunters is another anime concept i wanted to use, again to make the story more gritty. no evil teams here with world-domination plots, just poachers. pretty standard. still awful, especially if they’re poaching people, now, but nothing as wide-scale as team galactic.

i had so much fun writing ship captain jinbe. i wished i got more of a chance to write his crew, too. at this point i think i had just caught up reading blackbird by milo, and i was hooked on the idea of biker fishman gang and leader jinbe, so i adapted it into ship crew here. praline is there, yes. she’s badass. i said so, you heard it here. 

i talked a lot with my big bang partner, and we eventually decided jinbe’s a mix of hoenn and sinnoh descent. so, darker skin, almost polynesian, from hoenn’s more pacific island vibe. dark, curly hair. i drew a picture once? oh, here it is. jus a little sketch. he probably actually comes from hoenn, but he does cargo runs throughout sinnoh now. [i should probably say around, since there arent rly canals thru sinnoh?]

regarding law’s map error, i really jus wanted to reference flower paradise. of course the map he got was a tourist version, so of course it’s gonna include the magical pathway connecting the sinnoh league to an island of flowers. but it doesn’t actually exist, or if it does, it’s not always there, since they sail through the space with ease. just another fun easter egg. 

the marsh scene was another i’ve known i wanted since the beginning. i had so much fun drawing the map for it. i actually based the scenes entirely off the map, so while i knew the general direction i wanted it to go in, and that they would run into sabo, the part about wandering into the rain and encountering volcarona spawned while marking the map. crazy how things work, huh?

i think i made the chase move a little too fast, so most of the time out of their 12 hr limit is spent after departing from the marsh, wandering thru route 212. don get me wrong, the marsh scene spans over the course of hours, but its still less time from leaving the ship to leaving sabo than it is to get back to the ship.

the aegislash scene is the first one i conceptualized, of the marsh scene series. introducing law’s team was strategic, especially once i revealed luffy only had four pokemon. it was always meant to be a readers gamble how many law had. at the end of part 3, it’s pretty easy to gauge how many, but still, the surprise of the sixth pokemon in pt 4 is something im still proud of c:

anyway, yes, the first sense of real danger. poachers have no qualms in using their pokemon to harm other people. they’re there for the money, which they get from capturing and caging rare pokemon. who cares if they hurt a few people along the way? who cares if they brutalize them to take a particular pokemon, a-la mr. cleffa sir? law reacts to this very quickly, in part because he’s used to it, as explained in tragic backstory number 2, right behind one-brother-dies-and-the-other-runs-away from protag #2. 

actually, i guess the first danger was the wild kadabra, but this is the one in which someone gets hurt! . . . or, worse-hurt, because law’s scratch doesn’t count. luffy’s gash in his shoulder? that’s a big injury. especially when they can’t just stop to treat it, especially when law still has blood on his face from it, especially when they have to go right back to running around the marsh.

and then sabo appears!! i lied, this was the first marsh scene. i drabble-wrote it in my series-of-drabbles-to-add-to-the-outline before i made pt 3′s outline, and then wrote it for real. the aegislash-being-badass-therefore-law-also-by-proxy was the second. one of the first sentences i ever wrote for tether was law realizing the face from luffy’s picture was right before his eyes. 

so why do the hunters ignore luffy calling for sabo while running away?

yes, why the no consequences? i realized at this point they were too far away to hear and law too out of it (its law’s pov, still) to figure what they were saying, to i had to play it off. it’s another scene where i almost wrote a few paragraphs from a different perspective [the other two were the tsuru-caesar confrontation and the mr. cleffa dude ft. sabo scene, both of which i had to expand upon by talking, instead of a flashback to show it. i rly went full soul-eater approach here, huh? explaining everything through present means. well. save for law’s backstory, but that’s about the only thing.] but decided not to in the end.

here’s how the scene plays out, full disclosure. law and luffy spot the two hunters. a third person, sabo comes into view. the hunters tell sabo the situation, that they were being chased. law recognizes sabo, luffy does too, and calls out to him, loudly. this causes the hunters to panic, and they tell sabo, there, there’s the people chasing after us. law figures sabo has some secret reason for posing as a hunter and pulls luffy again out of view, not wanting to give him away. all three hunters take off running in the opposite direction. luffy calls out for sabo again, and sabo turns to question the other two, asking which pokemon they stole that was named ‘sabo’. he has a fake name, obviously. they don’t know he’s sabo. before they can figure it out, he derails the topic. but then he slips crossed fingers behind his back at the same time, signaling silently to luffy, who stops calling out.

so, tldr, sabo’s not using his real name while with the hunters and is smart enough to cover his ass from luffy’s mistake.

i wanted law carrying luffy, on their way down the route, to the stormclouds, and i’m pretty sure the one reason i didnt go thru with it is because law’s backpack. and, y’know, luffy being caked in mud. 

okay, do. panic attack time. ptsd time. a mix of both, ig. whatever you wanna call it. originally, this scene was going to be a bit different, and happen way earlier in the story. it didnt bc of sinnoh’s lack of fire types [there are only 2 i think, 2 lines i mean, so like 5] and the fact that ace’s team featured none of them. and then i thought, oh, i’ll jus make the same thing happen w sabo, except none of sabo’s team were one of them as well.

originally, it was going to be that law/lu encounter a clan of a specific type of wild fire pokemon. i think for the longest time it was talonflame, not sure anymore. anyway, so it was gonna go that luffy recognizes ace’s former pokemon outta the bunch, and they recognize lu as well, and the two reunite and all that jazz, and meanwhile law has his attack bc the group they encounter are one of the pokemon that tormented him in alola.

and, nope, now i remember why it didnt happen. as much as i hate dof, i had to craft a team for him for plot purposes, and that ended up being a bug team to go w the whole string motif. the problem was i had this scene planned for a looooong time, and it needed to be w a fire type, one of ace’s pokemon. except there are like no fire/bug pokemon, except for volcarona, who wasn’t on ace’s already-planned team at this point. i debated for foreeeeever and finally decided to screw it, and i made it sabo’s unova pokemon. so, instead of getting a unova dragon, in the land of dragons unova, sabo gets a volcarona and ace a darmanitan. all for plot purposes. no sense here. none at all.

[not that it matters, since sabo morphs into a fire trainer anyway after ace dies]

so, after i decided it would be sabos pokemon, the point came back to how they would encounter it. no hordes of wild volcarona in sinnoh. i sadly had to scrap the idea. this is what i came up with instead: volcarona coming to luffy to deliver a letter, and scarring law in the process.

Law has a chocolate bar, because he’s ten and anxious and chocolate seemed good at the time.

-aka my favorite line of the whole entire story!!!

and then law’s backstory time. so!!! for the longest time i was torn between setting the story in sinnoh or alola. this was my big compromise. i wrote a draft-outline for law’s alola backstory before i wrote a real outline for tether as a whole. this was the first part of the story i really wrote. i was done with it before i started pt 1, because i wanted to outline before i started writing. 

the thing abt law is that his life is so much of a tragedy. oda writes it so well, to the point where you’re thinking this can’t get any worse and then it gets worse, every time. i wanted to mimic that here. i didn’t do it justice, but i at least tried.

law’s life is filled with mistrust. his whole village dies, he nearly does as well, and so he packs up and runs away, and hides his one pokemon abra because he’s not a registered trainer and he refuses to abandon abra so theres mistrust towards everyone who can turn him in, and everyone who didnt care enough to help with the water crisis. he’s done with sinnoh. so he spends a bit holed up in a library, and once he reads about alola, he’s sold. he’s so mistrustful it’s not a matter of ‘anywhere is better than sinnoh’, its a matter of ‘i can’t end up in another place just like this’. alola is the solution.

except, he’s still mistrustful. so he hides abra, and he hides his money, and he doesn’t speak with anyone, and he leaves the city as soon as he can. he doesn’t know the rules of this place, but abra is all he has. he can’t lose abra. and then things go wrong.

because he’s out of sinnoh, but alola is different. he’s ten, and he’s never had a real pokemon battle, and all the wild pokemon of alola are too eager. he’s ten, and a pangoro attacks and he loses all his supplies on his very first day, because abra’s too exhausted to teleport them away this time. [in hindsight, i did a really bad continuity error here, throughout the entire flashback. it’s thru law’s eyes, so i describe the pokemon he doesn’t know about, and yet sometimes i name the pokemon he really shouldn’t know about. my bad.]

he’s ten, and the only food he finds is being guarded by a giant sumo crab, so he crawls to the other side of the beach and falls asleep on the sand, hungry. he’s ten, and he’s living off berries because money is only so good when you can exchange it, and he’s far away from civilization. he’s ten, and he spends the very last of his money on money for abra, for his only pokemon and his only ally, because going to a pokemon center would mean being seen and asking for a license to verify and its too risky, he can’t risk it. 

he’s ten, and he’s hungry, and he has nothing but the abra clutched in his arms and his ripped clothes clinging to his body, and he witnesses a murder. and they catch him in the act, and then he’s stuck, because he shouldn’t have a pokemon so young, and he’s a witness to a crime, and too quickly he’s in a very bad position.

he’s ten, and to keep abra alive, he joins a gang in alola.

he’s ten, and he’s blackmailed into working or risking abra being taken away. he’s ten, and he has morals, and there’s some tasks he won’t do, but the family boss punishes him for it, harshly. he stops having morals. it wouldn’t do him good here. 

law turns eleven, and suddenly gang tasks involve pokemon battles. law’s eleven, and doflamingo trains law himself, beating the weakness out of him, burning him, scarring him, terrorizing him because he can, and because law can’t refuse. 

law’s eleven when he realizes his picture-perfect alola was nothing but an illusion, because the lack of monopolies and corporations and factories actually had nothing to do with how much the natives cared about their own, or cared at all, about anything. just because alola didn’t have a pokemon league didn’t mean it wasn’t a bad place to be.

he’s eleven when he meets corazon, and finally, finally, gets a breath of fresh air, gets a taste of a person who isn’t there to ridicule him or abuse him. he’s eleven when he meets his first real friend since his sister died, meets someone that finally treats him like a human being. and it doesnt matter that he’s doflamingo’s brother, because he’s kind to law.

law’s eleven and corazon works to repair the damage done by the gang, little by little. he gets law out on an island challenge, and he wanders through melemele and akala and meets kind people and has fun and experiences the real alola. and he realizes, somewhere along the way, that he never wants to go back to the family ever again.

law’s eleven when he realizes he has no choice. because he belongs to doflamingo, because he has to skip out on ula’ula to accomplish a task for the family, because corazon sits there and lets it happen. 

law’s eleven when he’s given a pokemon egg, and when he’s given hope.

corazon was going to take care of everything. he was going to get them out, safely. they were going to rescue a captive pokemon. law was going to be free. law was never going to be hurt by the family again.

except, that’s not how it goes. corazon dies. corazon’s pokemon are tortured in order to lure law out. corazon’s pokemon all die for him and law has no option left but to run with all his might, all the way from one tip of ula’ula to the other. and then, because he can’t trust anyone, anyone, law runs away into a desert with no supplies to speak of.

law’s eleven when he comes face to face with the most temperamental tapu in the alola region, and even with all he’s been through, it’s the most scared he’s even been in his entire life. and then, when he comes to, he finds himself stranded in the kalos region. he’s eleven. he goes through all of this and he’s not even a teenager yet.

so, backing up just a bit, you can see how seeing a volcarona is going to invoke some rather strong emotions in law. he panics. he passes out. luffy puts volcarona away, because me might be oblivious on a lot of things, but he can understand the pure terror in law’s eyes.

alright, what else. the letter. of course luffy disavows the letter, he’s luffy, he can’t follow a plan to save his life.

[frejaedb]

alright here. yeah yeah u know who it is... 

&&. announcing her grace, ( freja esmée du bellay ), the ( 38 ) year old ( duchess ) of ( guyenne ). she is often confused with ( lily aldridge ). some say that she is ( phlegmatic and sly ), but she is actually ( ardent and purposeful ). ( OOC: ashley )

tw: mentions of depression

are yall ready. cause i’m ready

this is freja. her intro is all over the place because i just was kinda typing my sporadic thoughts. there’s a bunch of random info lol

she’s the daughter of vera bernadotte’s sister- ingrid bernadotte and the duke of guyenne- jean-pierre du bellay. (i’m realizing now, did vera keep her last name? let’s assume she did. and uh i made these names up. they can be changed)

she grew up in france, alternated holidays in sweden.

so sorry swedes, she definitely considers herself french before swedish. blame arnauld.

but she adores her swedish cousins. she likes to be the wise, cool aunt figure. gives them advice, lets astrid stay at her place, won’t snitch if they’re up to no good

she and arnauld grew up together, their fathers were friends, it was sort of like that relationship where it was a running joke that they’d be married so the fathers could be in-laws. never serious of course, but it did spawn a friendship.

freja was/is always so phlegmatic about everything she could never figure out exactly what she was passionate about. and she really didn’t care to either.

she’s always done her own thing bc of her big head. she’s always been kind of independent and all.

so freja had many major changes, started with poli sci because that’s what everyone else was doing, then she had a stint as a pre-med. didn’t last long. she moved on to psychology, stuck around for awhile. finally, she graduated with a history and art history dual degree

anyways, after college her father started to prep her for her job as the duchess. that’s when things get sketch. her father was one of the first noblemen that arnauld approached to get the crown on his head. arnauld wanted allies, and who would be more loyal than freja?

arnauld wanted freja to be ready to take power when he did, and from the years she was out of college until she took up the duchy, they worked closely together so arnauld’s plans would happen.

so that’s what happened- at the ripe age of 30 (when arnauld took the crown) freja was officially the duchess, and arnauld’s right hand woman.

arnauld does all the brainstorming, freja just wraps it up and puts a bow on it.

her father stepped down and retired, and he and her mother prob moved to some cute cottage in sweden and are living their best lives.

she’s convinced that arnauld’s plans will do france and the world good, and she played an instrumental part in shaping the courts along with arnauld.

and that sums up her involvement with arnauld, now simultaneously she also has a personal life, you know?

she got married when she was 32 to some random (prob) rich generational wealth type guy. she settled bc she was like damn i kind of want a family. she’s terrified of committing bc she loves her independence so much, and she thinks the way to maintain that is to marry a guy thats more attached to her than she is to him. is she in love? no. is she content? yes.

i was thinking of making her husband a wc but we’ll see. i don’t think it’s necessary tbh

she has a 4 y/o daughter (eloise) and a 2 y/o son (tobias).

she suffered with postpartum depression following the birth of eloise. she never wanted to hold her, she had anxiety over everything she did with the baby. was she feeding it right, bathing it right, swaddling it right, etc. and often she just handed it off to the nanny to take care of. she almost immediately went back to work, she didn’t feel the need to stay home. it wasn’t until six months later that she realized the signs. she went on medication to treat it, and eventually got better. but she had to get off medication to have her son.

she fears developing symptoms again, so she’s pretty protective of her kids

she’s like a saint around her kids. but around others she’s super impatient and demanding. do as i say not as i do, right?

in general she’s very two-faced... she’s gemini after all. so personality? she has all of them. the best way i can describe her is like she’s like the vixen but all grown up and practical now

woah this got long, srry

[1358456]

Gold Version Joy Run

Something that I wanted to do. Just like Yellow version, I will not restrict myself whatsoever. Which means... bring on the shenanigans.

Also, very important for me! This is the VERY FIRST TIME I actually do a full Gold version run with all the glitches at my disposal! So this is a new experience!

Let’s dance.

Right off the bat, a little f*ckery. Hey there, Silver boy. My croc is bigger than yours. ... What? Temporarily named as “Leviathan” since... well, let’s just say that the early Korean version of a certain scripture translated “Leviathan” as an alligator/crocodile. ... Gators don’t breathe flames from the mouth.

Critical Pokemon captured! Huhuhahahaha! Oh, Hoppip gets THREE moves at level 5, and one of them is Splash?! Ohohoho!

Once again, Silver boy, my croc is bigger than yours.

Splash in the third slot, eh?

Sorcery! Huhuhahahaha! Nickname: Apocalypse.

Here’s a little... side-product. ... Now that is a hell of a Rattata. No Rattata in existence can possibly have almost 400 HP at level 100, let alone level 69.

Or have that much Def, Sp. Atk, and Sp. Def. ... Or that low of an Atk. ... Dude. This guy can take hits and nothing else.

Turns out, you don’t even need a Graveler to whip Whitney’s ass. Geodude is fine. “Whits Bane”. As in, “Whitney’s Bane”. ... This was its literally only purpose.

So... this guy here... was a Quilava. Its data got corrupted during the demon magic bullsh*t, and it became an unstable Rattata. Which, when “stabilized”, became a level 1 Jigglypuff with Pokerus. ... Yep. I just force-spawned Pokerus. Because why not.

They are... parasites. Tiny little life forms stuck on the Pokemon. ... That’s nasty, dude.

The sorcery continues! Rock Smash in 3rd slot. Nickname: Leviathan. The true one. Behold the leviathan, monster of the sea! Its strong scales are its pride!

... Apparently this run’s ID gives me Smog and Fire Spin. Because those two moves were on all five Pokemon that I used this glitch to hatch. ... Which means this Lugia here is 2/5.

Nidorino! ... A Normal type Nidorino. ... ?????

“You could never catch a legendary Pokemon anyway.” ... You were literally just whipped by two of them. You blind f*ck.

Turns out, Morty is insanely easy if you... you know. Mewtwo doesn’t get Psychic until level 66, but... it gets Confusion at level 1.

Chuck’s Poliwrath was blasted so hard, its sprite died. RIP. Also proof that this was the result of shenanigans. Not only do I have a Lugia that’s level 24 (when the lowest you can get is 40 in Silver), but... Aeroblast. Aeroblast is only available in Silver version, since Lugia gets it at level 1, and then learns a new move every 11x level (11, 22, 33, 44, etc). So at level 40, it has Aeroblast, Safeguard, Gust, and Recover. In the wild, a level 44 one would’ve erased Aeroblast for Hydro Pump. So in Gold version, the level 70 Lugia does not have Aeroblast. In Crystal, the level... 60? Lugia does not have Aeroblast. And there is no such thing as a move re-learner in GSC. ... Similarly, Gold is the only version where you can get Sacred Fire. ... Which means, poor Crystal version. Doesn’t get sh*t.

Speaking of Sacred Fire... Shenanigans! Whirlpool in the 3rd slot. Nickname: Phoenix. 3/5.

Somehow, this doesn’t feel fair. Lance in the Pokemon League. Getting one-shotted. Hmm...

Well, that’s the Pokemon League down. EASY! But this time, I’m going all the way. Kanto!

Hey, this is the guy that kills your game. Talk to that thing and then open the Coin Case and then your game gets f*cked. Something like that.

Hmm... Kanto, huh? Then I get access to Grimer, and therefore Acid Armor... Hmm...

Huhuhuhahaha! Acid Armor in 3rd slot. Nickname: Doomguard. Apparently you can’t use numbers, so... I couldn’t name it as “135″. Boo. Ehn. It’s not shiny, so... 4/5.

“This Gym is great! Only girls are allowed here!” ... Yeah, maybe that line is better deleted in HGSS. ... The HGSS line makes no damn sense. Just deleting this guy would’ve been better.

... Were you... having a date right in front of someone else’s house? ... What is wrong with you?

Oh you poor, sad little man. Living in a cave, since Cinnabar Island burned down. Volcano eruption. Well, at least in HGSS, you modified the sh*t out of the cave floor in Seafoam Islands. In here, you’re literally just a dude sitting in a cave all by yourself.

Janine. You sad f*ck. What is this? Level 36?! The weakest Kanto leader by far. Even weaker than a Johto leader. That’s just... pitiful.

Oh, I remember this. The trainer house? Oh, I spent a lot of time here back in actual Gold version, trying to get Metronome to get Transform so I could Transform into the Smeargle with Sketch, so that the Mewtwo would get Sacred Fire. And I succeeded... twice, since I accidentally deleted Thunderbolt, so I had to do this glitch again, but for Thunderbolt.

Johto Leaders must be pretty pathetic because I beat them? You f*ck. Here you are, sitting all by yourself in a Gym clearly made of Lego, and you’re calling the Johto Leaders pathetic?

Well, now that I annihilated this f*ck with Mewtwo (for a specific reason), I now have access to Mt. Silver, and thus, my 5th and last addition to my team. Oh, SNEASEL!!!

Final shenanigans. Beat Up in 3rd slot. Nickname: Temporus. 5/5. It ain’t a Dragon, but hey. Time thingy. And so my team is ready. Level 59 Mew, 56 Mewtwo, 55 Lugia, 55 Ho-oh, 55 Celebi. Time to take on Red with his level 70+ team.

Oh yeah. GSC Mt. Silver requires Flash. ... Flash is for sissies?!

... Wow. Can’t see sh*t except for an item that’s... ... How would you even see that?!

So... Flash is necessary. Cool. Adding in a level 5 Togepi with Flash. The team is ready.

Mt. Silver. So... here is a “hidden” path that leads to a cave with literally nothing in it. ... Like, what the f*ck was the point of this?

And another hidden path to another hidden cave with literally nothing in it. ... WHY?! Were there supposed to be some cool hidden sh*t here that got canned at the last moment?!

... So, that’s how pitiful Pikachu is. Level 81, got outrun by a level 59 Mew (base 90 vs. base 100), and one-shotted by Earthquake. ... See, this is why I can the Pikachu as soon as possible in Yellow version for a Mew. Pikachu ain’t my starter. MEW is my starter!

And ANNIHILATED! You poor sap. I have a bunch of Pokemon 20 levels lower, and yet... EASY. Why? Because Legendaries have much higher stats than other Pokemon. And in RGBY GSC, every stat gets “EVed”. ... PKRS also helps out greatly. In short, all my Pokemon are better by far. ... Which is why I restrict myself to non-Legendaries only in other normal runs. It just ain’t fair otherwise.

Now that I finished the game, I guess I’ll go to the one thing I always found super cool and very f*cking meaningless. Edit the time to be Monday, and make a beeline for Mt. Moon!

... F*ck. I forgot about this encounter. Way to ruin it, dude. It’s a huge step down from facing Red to facing you. Boo. ... Also, now you f*cking notice? You weak pathetic f*ck. Dude, you don’t need love to raise Pokemon. You’ve been using violence, and you’ve been mislead that you need love and affection. ... Dude, you need knowledge. Violence can only come properly afterwards. ... This is a reference to the elder’s questions in Crystal and HGSS Dragon’s Den. “What do you need to raise Pokemon? Love, violence, or knowledge?”

The Clefairy dance in Mt. Moon Square! Only on Mondays at night. This is still in HGSS, I think. The Clefairy dance and... leaves you a Moon Stone before running off, which means the Moon Stone is the only evolution stone you can get infinite amount of times. The others, you get like... two. Fire/Water/Leaf/Thunder Stones require you to be in Kanto for some f*cked up reason!

Now then, Gold version joy run is over. Lots of shenanigans happened. And here is my final team:

Caught Snorlax with a duplicated Master Ball, removed the Leftovers, duplicated that 5 times so all 5 of my Pokemon can have one. Constant HP regeneration for Pokemon with PKRS boosted stat experience, and with base HP stats of 100, 100, 106, 106, 106? That’s pretty freaking cheap, man.

Psychic: Level 40, but... who has the time for that? Duplicated TM 29: Psychic 4 times, so... yay. Shadow Ball: TM 30, again duplicated. Earthquake: TM 26, duplicated. Ice Punch, TM 33. Purchased in Goldenrod! Yay for not having to use the duplication glitch!

... And PP maxed for the PP 10 or lower moves using the duplicated PP Ups.

I ain’t waiting for level 66 for Mewtwo to get Psychic. Duplicated TM!

Psychic, Earthquake, and Shadow Ball. ... Just like Mew. And Ho-oh. DUPLICATION! But look. When there’s one...

There’s the other. With a symmetrical moveset.

... Celebi doesn’t learn Psychic by itself. ... TM. Also doesn’t get Giga Drain by itself. ... TM (duplicated). Shadow Ball? Also TM. And since Celebi’s movepool is as shallow as Keldeo’s, I let it keep Leech Seed. And with Leech Seed and Leftovers, Celebi here was able to easily annihilate Red’s Snorlax despite its Amnesia. EASY!

And there you have it! An easy-ass annihilation of Gold version. ... All you have to do f*ck up the game. At one point, the Dex said that I owned 39 Pokemon. But the Dex only showed me the “owned” icons for 19. Which means, I apparently owned 20 Pokemon that I never saw. ... Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Poor game. But at least “POOKYPOOKY” didn’t appear this time.

[lonedailydoodle]

Daily Doodle 177/365 - June 26, 2017

Really, I can explain..

Also, that is NOT a dabbing Deathclaw with thrusters attached to it hanging from the sky

Today I woke up coughing but just once or twice, that’s all. I didn’t have any pain throughout the day, but I do still need hydrating, that is all! Other minor health related issues is that my right arm has been pulsing for most of the day and it hurt a lot, no idea why though.. happens randomly, I guess

Okay, so, I spent most of the morning refining a sketch for the commission due this week. As I said, I’m using personal deadlines now to hurry up with my projects. Then during the afternoon I started inking most of it, so I did do progress this time!! :D

Later Pixie was super bored and wanted some company.. so we started playing some Garry’s Mod together. He originally wanted to play Smash again, that one survival gamemode where you have to not fall while stuff lands around you. But I was bored of that, so we played sandbox and fooled around.. but this time we did something we rarely ever do..

Build

So we did just that! The area where we were building quickly got littered with wheels, thrusters and vehicles.. some were on fire or already exploded even

I built a big wheel with a seat in it and nicely placed thrusters so it would spin, I got dizzy with it then it was Pixie’s turn and we had fun with that little simple thing. I later built a 360 swing and we both got busy with that as well

I later spawned a makeshift jet and flew it everywhere, that one was super fun and will fly again

Anyways, in the span of all this, I had spawned a bunch of Deathclaw ragdolls for no reason, they were massive too. Pixie posed a few and threw others away while I posed one then hung another one from skybox of the map.. then I put thrusters on its hands and watched it speed away and go in circles, it was pretty funny! I also made it dab.. aww yeh

Anyways, at one point, I spawned a trailer truck and started chasing Pixie, which frightened him as he frantically ran away. I did this for a long while, it was hard to get between buildings but he had a blast, I could tell xD

After we stopped playing, some hours later he told me the reason he was so afraid was because he used to play a lot of Sonic games and in one of them a giant truck chased you and you could see it

.. RUNNING AROUND AT THE SPEED OF SOUND

[josephborrello]

Magnitude and Direction, Issue #30

Notes

Is it just me, or does it feel like there was a longer-than-normal interval between last edition and this one? I promise it's only been two weeks, like normal. Anyway, today's font is Garamond. --- Also, I'm launching a new portion of this newsletter tomorrow morning, which takes ones of the topics covered in the previous day's issue of M&D and expands on it, with a little bit more of my own voice and opinions. Think of it as an Op-Ed column for M&D.  And, of course, another physics pun is involved, this one to reflect that point in time when you're still sitting in bed, grab your phone, open the article, and end up stuck in bed reading it. It's a moment when an object at rest (you) stays at rest... one could call it a Moment of Inertia. (So I did.) The first Moment of Inertia comes out tomorrow morning, so stay tuned and I look forward to hearing back from you all about it.

Hardware, Prototyping, and Fabrication

 Olivier van Herpt's 3D printed ceramic vases are perfect for people like me who don't have the patience to work with clay by hand.  How magnetic are your country's coins?  This is how to make a pair of pliers from nothing but a piece of wood and a chisel blade.  Typically, 3D printing only works when each layer of material has something to lay on top of, be it the previous layer of material or the build platform. When this doesn't happen - especially in the case of plastic extrusion, or FDM, printing - we consider the resulting structure a failure. As is often the case, though, one person's failure is another's inspiration. The result? Some beautiful sculptures and a deep dive into the future of additive manufacturing in the first ever edition of Moment of Inertia.

Software and Programming

ji32k7au4a83 looks like it would be a great password, but it turns out it's a pretty bad one because of what it translates to on a Mandarin keyboard.  We may think we can act randomly but this game says otherwise.  A lot can get done in a minute online.  NVIDIA's GANs are at it again: taking MS Paint-level sketches and turning them into masterful photos.  Clippy, of Microsoft Office fame, had been unemployed since 2001 when they were removed from the office suite. Last month, however, Clippy made a brief comeback on Microsoft's version of Slack as a reaction sticker option(actually a whole bunch of them), as well as part of the Microsoft Office developer github repository. While everyone's favorite anthropomorphic paperclip has since been re-retired by the Microsoft "brand police", there's still hope that someone forked that repo...

Science, Engineering, and Biomedicine

🛸 Is Earth the sole domain of intelligent life in the galaxy? So far, the answer seems to be "Yes". New models of intra-galactic settlement that take into consideration the orbits of stars around our galaxy's core, however, indicate that we may not be along in the galaxy. In fact, our potential galactic neighbors may have actually passed through so quickly we never even noticed them. (Original paper here.)  While the orbit of Venus is closer to Earth's orbit, Mercury is, in fact, our closest solar system neighbor.  Scientists from the US and China were able to give mice the ability to "see" (really more like detect) infrared light, via intraocular nanoparticle injections.  Do you like slime molds? Well, have I got an Instagram account for you.  If you're looking to culture the perfect Emmental cheese, then you might want to consider buying a few records from A Tribe Called Quest. That being said, the potential mechanisms behind why are still very much unknown, as the original paper admits.

Mapping, History, and Data Science

🔊 Datavized and the Google News Initiative recently released TwoTone, a free web tool for data sonification, bringing a new dimension and sensory modality to the understanding of our data. 🥂 Researchers from the University of Rochester are training an AI to detect when we're TWI (tweeting while intoxicated). (Original paper here.)  Graphs and charts are cool, but sometimes they can be lacking in a certain... dynamic element. For those cases, Google has come to the rescue with their Data GIF Maker, which can take a static data graphic and turn it into a lively, exciting animated GIF. The capabilities are still a little limited for now, but I'm excited to see where this goes.

Events and Opportunities

There's always that one day when everything ends up happening. This time it's April 10th...

Saturday, 4/6 It seems like startup/entrepreneurship meetup groups in NYC have been popping up like crazy and the NYC Entrepreneurs and Startup Connection meetup is another new one on the scene. They'll be having their first networking party in midtown at Highbar.

Monday, 4/8 It's New York versus the Netherlands at the 4th Annual Harlem2Haarlem pitchfest. Three startups from the city formerly known as New Amsterdam and three startups from the city still known as Amsterdam will  compete for prizes and international bragging rights.

Tuesday, 4/9 The NYC Professionals, Entrepreneurs, and Business Owners meetup group will gather at the WeWork on 5th Ave for coffee and conversation.

Wednesday, 4/10 Come see some of New York's most promising life science startups pitch their innovations at the 7th annual pitch day to wrap up this year's ELab NYC accelerator program.

Wednesday, 4/10 NY Designs is holding a Women in Tech happy hour featuring some of the awesome female engineers, makers, and entrepreneurs working in the NYC and NY Designs tech ecosystems. And yes, individuals who identify as female and men are welcome to attend as well.

Wednesday, 4/10 GeoNYC holds their next meetup, featuring lightning talks and cool demos from the NYC geo-mapping community.

Wednesday, 4/10 Cornell Tech hosts a panel discussion on consumer Health Tech, featuring clinicians and technologists leading innovative consumer health tech companies.

Wednesday, 4/10 Interested in pursuing a career in healthcare consulting? Join the Tri-I consulting club for an evening of networking and discussions with members of the CBPartners consulting team.

Friday, 4/12 The NYC Startup Community meetup group is hosting a mixer for entrepreneurs and professionals working in technology and digital arts.

Monday, 4/15 The NY Hardware Startup meetup is back at Kickstarter HQ for their next gathering.

Wednesday, 4/17 The NYC Startup Community meetup group is hosting a panel discussion about what it's really like to work at a startup, featuring some of the earliest employees of local ventures.

Wednesday, 4/17 Astronomy on Tap celebrates 6 years in NYC at their Orbit-versary celebration at the Way Station in Brooklyn.

Some other upcoming events to keep on your radar...

Tuesday, 4/23 Mark your calendars now for the 4th Annual GRO Your Career life sciences conference at Columbia University (and yes, I am helping organize this event). A wide array of professionals from industries directly and indirectly related to the life sciences will be giving talks and participating in panel discussions, with lots of opportunities for networking.

Wednesday, 4/24 Scientists, artists, and everything in between gather together for the April SciArt Synapse mixer at the Peculier Pub.

May 3-5 MIT is holding their 2019 Grand Hack, one of the biggest medical hackathons in the world that has spawned several successful companies over its history. Applications to participate are due by April 17th!

Map of the Month

 Compare expectations versus reality with this interactive map showing the original plan for New York City's street grid overlaid with what actually happened.

Odds & Ends

 French train company Ouigo ("wee-go", get it?) is here for your computer pinball fix.