#Spoiler Zone! || Ghost Game

[digital-gateway]

//: I am having. THOUGHTS about last night's episode of gg, among other things.

Gulus is, from what I can tell from the episode, his own entity within Gammamon, with the ability to communicate with Siriusmon & probably the other Evos.

Gulus being his own entity though makes SENSE. Especially after rewatching older episodes and seeing that he partially manifests when Gammamon is in grave danger- namely with Clockmon's bullshit. He's just there to act as protection from things that could kill him.

I will, until the finale, assume that Gulus is who Gammamon once was, and something caused a reversion which locked that half of him away. And after these events, is when he was sent to Hiro, potentially in hopes that he wouldn't evolve the same way again. Which checks out, as no one recognizes the other Evolutions, as if they're brand new Digimon.

Gulus, however, had been recognized as "The Jet-Black Champion/Tyrant" by the Oboromo, and Witchmon asked Gammamon is he was like the "Dark Conqueror". Which I'm pretty sure is referring to Arcturusmon. These Digimon are known, but as far as I can recall, the ones we see the most... Aren't.

It's interesting! And I fear for the next episode. Preview only showed the Digimon that we meet at the very end, and it's called "The Black Dragon of Destruction"? Regulus here we come? Gonna assume this Digimon is the one that will absolutely require Hiro and Gulus to sync, and in turn, allows him to evolve into Regulus, and kick things off... Especially with the fact we only saw his fight? which I doubt will last more than the starting point of the episode or the halfway point.

[izzyizumi]

Espimon, Wistfully: ..I want to "evolve" too... mE, BANGING FISTS DOWN: I WANT YOU TO, TOO!!!!

[flamingpudding]

Ouija Board Prompt Idea

A/N: A late night Idea that came to me instead of sleep and I wrote this down during lunch break

Danny was just in Gotham because the city spirit had asked him for assistance with a rather persistent unruly Ghost that didn't understand that this was her haunt and she did not want them there.

So when he got the notice he did his kingly duties and made sure the Ghost was no longer annoying Lady Gotham. He was the Ghost King but even he didn't want to anger a spirit as old as her. He had watched the spirit take a ghostly club and hit Clockwork the Ancient of Time with it without remorse the first time they were introduced. So yea, no messing with this one.

He had been about to portal back home when he felt a strange pull one that was close to when he got summoned but yet it didn't feel as demanding but more like a little kid pulling on his shirt hesitantly. So he checked it out…

… and came across a group of vigilantes investigating an occult side.

Invisible he watched them, curious. He used to do the teen hero stick too before the whole Ghost King business allowing him to get some semblance of a normal life with his rogues, might as well see how others to that hero stick. Besides the pull he felt appeared to come from that tall one wearing a red helmet something was up with that guy.

"Come on, ask the ghosts a question or are you too chicken to do it?"

"I will not participate in this nonsense, Red Hood."

"Come on guys it will be fun!"

"For whom? You, Spoiler?"

"RR aren't you curious?"

"We just gotta ask the board a question and if a ghost is around they will answer by moving it, right?"

"Ghosts don't exist."

Okay Danny was not taking personal offense here but he was a half ghost and he ruled the Ghost Zone filled with ecto-entities that could count as ghosts. So yes, ghosts existed. It was a simple decision then as he floated down invisible crouching next to board still invisible and out of the way from them.

Making sure he made a lot of scraping noises as he moved the small wooden piece on the board to 'YES'.

Someone yelped and someone else shrieked, though Danny wasn't sure if that was a shriek of excitement or not. He still grinned at their reactions.

"Did that just move to 'YES'! It did, didn't it!"

Yea okay that earlier was a shriek of excitement considering how that girl in purple was jumping around. Though the poor kid among them looked a little paler now, Danny decided to keep an eye on the kid to make sure he wasn't overdoing it.

"Okay so a ghost is here?"

Maybe he should have bothered listening to Lady Gotham or Tucker more about the vigilantes of Gotham. Oh well no time better as this to learn. What did the girl call this boy again, RR? Danny wondered what that stood for.

He moved the piece around the board a little making sure they noticed before he spelled something out.

"N-O-S-H-I-T-S-H-E-R-L-O-C-K. No shit Sherlock. Ha! I like this ghost!" The tall one laughed, he believed the kid called him Red Hood earlier. Well the red helmet was a great testament to that sort of code name. Still he wondered about that weird feeling he got from the guy but pushed that aside for later.

"Well since there is a ghosts, what should we ask?"

"Maybe how old he is?"

"Think it rude to ask how he died?"

Danny rolled his eyes. Those were such mainstream questions.

"B-O-R-I-N-G, 1-6 , YES. Guys it looks like we are not were imaginativ."

"Well what do you suggest we ask then?"

"I don't know! Maybe he can show us a cool trick?"

"You know that reminds me of this game that's been out for a while, phasmophobia or something like that?"

Oh Danny knew this one! Tucker had told him about the game, he himself hadn't played it but he had watched his best friend do so, they had a lot of fun joking about how the ghosts were portrayed and the tools that were available to the players.

"So what? We ask the ghost to play Hide and Seek with us?"

"Let's cease this nonsense. This is not something we should mess with."

"Oh are you scared?"

He made a show of moving the wooden piece, doing his best not to snicker out loud as he moved the piece to count down from the number 9. Letting his own powers out a little to cause the already dim light to flicker and the room to cool down several degrees.

The reaction was instant once again. Though he didn't expect them to run for hiding spaces he definitely did not expect these people to pull out their weapons and position against each other's back like they were ready for a fight. Then again they were vigilantes

The poor kid among them looked even paler. Before his count down could reach 0 he decided to not scare the poor kid more. Pulling back his powers the room's temperature normalized and the lights stopped flickering. He moved the wooden piece knowing that at least one of them was watching it in anticipation.

"J-K-S-O-R-R-Y"

"I think the ghost just apologized to us?" The RR teenager said carefully and Danny couldn't help the sheepish smile even if they couldn't see it in his invisible state.

"You know about the game?"

He moved the piece to YES.

"So you thought it was fucking appropriated to scare us like that?"

He moved the piece around and placed it back to YES before spelling out sorry again. The vigilantes shared a look and Danny decided to spell out a question.

"L-I-T-T-L-E-G-U-Y-O-K-A-Y"

"Huh? Uh yea Robin is fine." They looked confused but Danny kept his eyes on the kid. Well the poor boy still looked very pale but he also appeared to try to put on a brave front, it nearly caused a chuckle to escape the halfa.

"Can you show yourself?"

"S-U-R-E"

Not like he was really going to show himself but this was going to be fun, he thanked the Ancients that he was taking lessons with Pandora on how to manipulate his own ectoplasm. He summoned a blob of it making sure he himself was still invisible as he let the green blob be visible, forming it and making it look like a blob ghost.

The reaction was once again instant. They yelled in the chaos all he caught sounded like 'Lazarus water! Moving Lazarus Water!' Before the pale kid, Robin they said, slashed at his ectoplasm blob with his katana, essentially doing nothing to the blob of ectoplasm. The sword just went through it and Danny still holding it confused just instinctively let it reform the shape he gave it.

Danny blinked, okay now he was definitely not showing himself. "This is no a ghost but a Pit Demon!"

From the corner of the eye he saw Lady Gotham appear in the room staring at him disapprovingly and holding that ghost club she had used on Clockwork.

"I can explain, really! I was just joking with them!" He stood holding his hands up to smooth the situation, the green blob fell to the ground splashing against the Ouija Board with a loud splat. His chances of not get hit like Clockwork by Lady Gotham were becoming slimmer.

"WHO SAID THAT?!"

Shit, he hadn't used ghost speech but said that out loud.

[fuzzybirdie]

Hero of Changing Faces

Warning, 'tis a bit sweary. Enjoy!

Ch.2 The MOTHERFUCKER Of All Time

The GODDAMN Joker was attacking the GODDAMN ammusement park in the middle of the GODDAMN school holidays! So Duke was a teensy bit pissed.

Today was supposed to be fun! Everyone, including Tim and Alfred, had made sure to clean up their scheduals enough for a family outing, and they managed to pull steph along as well!

Everything was going well so far too! Sure, Damian couldn't stop scoffing at this couple yelling 'Ghost!' All the time, and Tim and Jason were trying to one-up eachother at all the carnival games, (before being absoloutley demolished by cass), but it was fun! They Were having fun.

And then the motherfucker of all time hijacked the roller coaster.

Alfred had managed to sneak everyone's costumes into their day packs, probably foreseeing something going wrong. Either way, this meant that everyone could sneak away and change to fight the Joker.

After getting changed, Signal charged towards the announcer's booth, running into Nightwing on the way. Nightwing who looked pale and terrified. "B went ahead to the roller coaster!" Nightwing called. Ah, Signal's question must've been obvious.

"Isn't that a good thing?" Signal called back,

"Not as a civillian! He went in before it got hijacked!"

"Fuck!"

"Red, Orphan, and I are en route to the rollercoaster" Red Hood interupted "Robin's on his way to the announcer booth, and Spoiler is on evac duty,"

"Roger," Nightwing grappeled past a group escaping one of the rides, "Signal and I will randevous with robin. B is among the civillians on the roller coaster."

"Understood. We'll be in touch once the civvies are safe. Over and Out."

The announcer booth was surrounded by goons, who were taken care of easily enough. (Thank you, pepper spray bottles of sleeping gas!) Leaving the door wide open. Nightwing and Signal crept in, the only hint of their (re: Signal's) presence was the lights dimming and the shadows growing.

The Joker had set himself in the middle of the moniter room. He'd somehow found the time to inflate an air matress and was now lying down, eating popcorn, and kicking his legs like a schoolchild.

"Oh boo!" The Joker cried as the rollercoaster judded to a stop "they didn't even get halfway up! This show sucks!"

Robin took this moment to reveal himself both to his brothers and the Joker by attempting to skewer the latter through the arm. "Oh hi, little Robin!" Joker cackled as Robin missed "Come to watch the show? Though," he looked at where Robin's sword had punctured his matress "That was really rude. Guess I can kill you now!"

As Joker pulled out a gun to shoot at Robin, Signal manipulated the light of the moniters to blind him. Nightwing's escrima crackled into his exposed back, and he was down.

Something clattered out of the Joker's hands along with the gun. Signal had a closer look at it while Nightwing cuffed Joker and Robin shut down all the rides.

"Joker had a deadman trigger!" He practically shrieked into the comms "Get everyone out of there now!" Looking closer at the moniters, it was easy to see the bombs at the bottom of every other support. Thankfully, with Robin having turned off the rides, the safety bar had let go, and the other bats had gotten all the civillians off the ride. Unfortunately, they were still in the blast zone.

Red Robin turned to say something to the civillians. Then this white haired kid practically threw Red Hood into Orphan, who was checking someone for injuries. With everyone behind him, the kid threw out his hands, as a sheet of ice grew from them. The ice seemed to thin to stop anything, but it covered everyone quickly. Once a dome had formed the ice began to thicken.

Then the bombs detonated.

~~~~~~

first / prev / next

It was under the word limit!

So, how many of you got the cameo last chapter? :)

As always, this was inspired by @freedomanddisorder's art and the following prompt chain. Please check out both, they are So cool,

[emergency-plan]

DPxDC Idea

I had a little idea an have no time to actually write a fic, so I just wrote a sorta-summary and am posting it like this.

This is inspired by the game Home Safety Hotline and may contain hints to spoilers for that game. It's really clever, I really like it. I recommend you play it if slightly spooky without any "real" horror appeals to you.

Alright, Danny's been Ghost King for a few years and has realized more than just his usual rogues make their way to the living world, and a lot of those ghosts don't stay in Amity. By himself, it'd take forever to track down all those spirits and specters that are out causing mischief. Luckily, not many that escaped his notice are all that powerful and could only cause minor disturbances, just enough to get noticed by the living.

Many people outside Amity don't even recognize the activity as ghosts, so they blame other sources. Scratching in the walls is mistaken as mice, whispers and apparitions are mistaken as hallucinations and carbon monoxide hallucinations, attempted overshadowings mistaken as stokes or migraines. In this day and age, where does everyone turn to when looking for advice or how to solve problems? The internet.

Team Phantom devise a method to try and track down ghosts that are stuck or tormenting the living by building a website meant to look like a help hotline, and with some algorithm trickery make it one of the top options when searching for signs similar to ghost presences. Add some bits and bobs to make it appear as a more normal-looking website on any computer affiliated with government organizations, and you’ve got some protection from the GIW.

Calls start slowly, so the three of them can handle it by themselves. Once more people are calling, they decide to start a call center. They hired some trusted people around Amity and even a few ghosts who want to help. To get around worrying about the ghosts messing with the tech while personally taking a call, they decide to automate the system to record caller’s reports for the employees to listen to, and then send a report back, offering their services to bring the spirit back to the Realms.

It’s been surprisingly lucrative, and Danny hasn’t had to dip into his kingly funds much other than at the start. He still keeps prices low, just enough to not garner suspicions at offering a free service while paying his workers fairly (he doesn’t want to know why some of the ghosts want mortal money). What he’s started having more trouble with is not enough employees to take the calls. Sometimes ghosts lose track of time and don’t show up for their shifts (he doesn’t blame them, time gets weird in the Ghost Zone), and he’s run out of people he trusts who want the job.

Eventually he decides to put out an ad, deciding he’ll slowly trust whoever takes the job with a little more information over time, see how they react, and measure to see if they’re trustworthy.

What he doesn’t think about is how posting it on the website will let more people than just those that live in Amity apply.

Meanwhile, in Gotham, one Cassandra Cain is looking for a job. She doesn’t need the money, B gives her access to way too much, but she wants the experience. She’s at the age she’s heard most kids get a job, and she wants to see what it’s like.

And she quickly found out retail and fast food are NOT for her. She doesn’t think those conditions are fit for anyone, honestly. She’d have to see if she could get Bruce to work on that. But that still leaves her out of a job. She got overwhelmed with a lot of people, so virtual options would probably be best, and something that let her interact with people without having to speak. There weren’t a lot of options out there, and she wasn’t skilled enough with a computer yet to take programming ones.

That’s when she found the listing for the hotline call center. Based in a small Illinois town, but had virtual options, listen to recorded customer calls, diagnose their issue, and send an information packet on potential next steps. It was indirect, could also help her practice her reading, and flexible. It was perfect.

It didn’t take long to hear back after she applied (Danny was freaking out, he didn’t think anyone outside Amity would apply. He’d turn this kid down, but she’d mentioned her difficulties with speaking in her application and SWEETY YOU DONT MENTION STUFF LIKE THAT ON AN APPLICATION. But she said the job would be perfect for her and he just couldn’t…) and she got the job!

Her first day rolls around and she’s given access to the database. A lot has been redacted, but she has descriptions for common problems like mice, carbon monoxide, black mold, etc. she gets her first call recording and carefully reads through the entries before selecting the one that sounds right. She sends it off and waits for the next. The calls come a little too regularly, with too similar intervals between them, so she figures her new employer is testing how well she’s doing (Danny’s giving her previous resolved calls that weren’t anything supernatural. She even got the ants right! He had even gotten that wrong!)

Eventually, her shift ends and she tells her family how well her first day went at dinner. They congratulate her and go on patrol as usual. The next day, things ramp up a little.

She logs into the database at the beginning of her shift and noticed some new entries. She now had access to descriptions of shades, blob ghosts, will o’ wisps, and more minor spirits. She gets a recording reminding her all this info is confidential and that she’s not allowed to share it with anyone. She’s a little confused, but she reads through each just as carefully. The calls come less regularly, so she figures she’s actually connected to the system now (Danny gave her access to the most common ghosts they get calls about and is listening in while he’s handling ghosts to make sure she doesn’t get anything she’s not prepared for).

Her shift ends and over dinner, she mentions that she’s had to diagnose some odd things. They assure her there’s more pests and hazards out there than you’d expect. She doesn’t tell her family about the distraught woman haunted by the Ecto-Echo of her husband’s habit of making her coffee every morning after he passed a few weeks ago. Or the person who had a Shade masquerading as their shadow. Just about one of her caller's cockroach problem.

The next day follows a similar pattern; more entries, slightly more powerful ghosts, reminder that the info she's been given access to is confidential and could get people hurt if it got in the wrong hands, congratulated for her good work, read through carefully and learn signs of each, diagnose calls, before calling it a day (Danny was so proud of her, she'd only confused a blob ghost with a ghost animal once, and it hadn't caused him any trouble when he went to collect them).

She'd used the bat-computer to check up on some of the callers she'd diagnosed, and they seemed to be doing fine. Some had posted about their weird experiences on their social media and how her employer had somehow helped them, but often didn't quite know how (Danny liked to hide his powers, so most of what customers saw was him using ghost tech. When it couldn't be solved with just a quick souping, he had to pull a little ghostly trickery while the customer wasn't watching). She didn't know how her boss was somehow across the world multiple times a day to help clients in different countries, but he seemed to at least be helping people. She started not having any stories she could tell her family at dinner.

At some point, she heard reports that one of the speedsters probably messed with time travel again before clocking into her shift. She had almost all the available entries and had gotten very good at recognizing tricky cases. She answered a recorded call, just like at the beginning of each of her shifts, but this one was a little different. Danny had sent out an announcement to be on the lookout for a specific phenomena that often occurred after shifts in reality, as they were highly dangerous and needed to be dealt with swiftly.

She studied each entry and paused on what she was supposed to keep a careful eye out for. Revenants, corpses that came back to life, often seen shambling around the graveyards they were buried in. Something about that sounded familiar. A section in their entry said the person brought back often had a ghost in the Realms (which she still didn't know what that was) that was in terrible pain from shifts in reality trying to pull them back to their body, but the separation of dimensions preventing them.

Expectedly, she did get a call from someone convinced there was a zombie wandering somewhere along the east coast. She double checked it couldn't be anything else before submitting it and notifying her boss.

Curious, and she knew no one would be in the batcave around this time of day, she brought her laptop with her down to the bat-computer. She found cameras in the area the caller reported, and froze at what she saw. Shambling across an abandoned street was a rotting corpse. It really did look like a zombie. It was covered in dirt, wearing an old-fashioned suit, and had skin sloughing off its bones.

But what Cass could only focus on was how much its movements read that it was in pain. It was suffering in such a horrible way its mindless being didn't even deserve. It was horrible.

Then, there was a flash of green and an area of the cameras were covered in static. The glitched portion somehow read with kindness and pity. It slowly approached the corpse, simple reaching out gently (what was presumably a hand), ignoring the way it lashed out. It suddenly fell, caught and slowly lower to the ground by the strange being she couldn't see. It closed the thing's eyes before carrying it off in the direction the map said a graveyard could be found.

After that, she finished her shift and went to dinner. Her family asked if she was alright, and she only replied it'd been a long day.

She clocked in early the next day and messaged her boss for more information on Revenants. Dinner that night was one of the few times Jason agreed to come by, and if he noticed how she kept glancing at him, he didn't say anything.

A week later, she asked her boss what might happen if a Revenant was exposed to, as it was called in its entry, a "Corrupted Ecto-Spring" ("...an ugly hole in the fabric of reality that connects the world of the living to the Realms. The ectoplasm that leaks through the tear stagnates and festers into toxic pools that kills humans and makes ghosts sick."). Danny requested a video call.

[eiloveir]

→﹐naruto hc! <3

‹𝟹 :: ⭑⭒  🗨 !!  naruto characters and their social media habits

warnings: rushed and out-of-character

note: this is just something I decided to create on a whim, though I was inspired by a post on a clock app. i imagined how these characters might use social media, so here it is.

characters: konoha 12

𓋭  ۫   ☔️ ﹒ ❊  ͚

uzumaki naruto

this guy’s the reigning king of shitposting. he’s got a knack for calling out anything he deems “overrated,” and he doesn’t hold back. his feed is a never-ending stream of complaints about everything from minor inconveniences to full-blown disasters. you might see posts about how his ramen was too hot or things like pineapple on pizza. he’s the kind of troll who wouldn’t hesitate to pick a fight with kids on roblox, turning every argument into a battle that leaves them in tears and scrambling to save face (konohamaru). he would also be the type to start internet beefs over the most mundane things. if you’re ever scrolling through your feed and see a heated argument about why a certain trend is lame, chances are he is behind it.

haruno sakura

the feminist and activist extraordinaire! she’s the type of woman who not only supports human rights in every way possible but also cheers on the LGBTQ+ community with gusto—because, spoiler alert, she’s part of it. she’s someone who’s fully aware of the impact social media can have and is determined to use it to amplify her voice and make a real difference. i also think she has multiple social media accounts like a pro—there’s her private twitter account where she rants about how messed up the government is, her ao3 account where she writes fan fiction with a side of social commentary, and of course, her tumblr where she’s a curator of memes, political discourse, and everything in between. (me)

uchiha sasuke

god, bruh. this dude is basically a social media ghost—he hardly ever posts anything, but when he does, it’s like the internet has just won the lottery. he’s that guy who seems to do absolutely nothing yet somehow manages to grab everyone’s attention. he’s not really into posting on social media, but when he does, it’s always so aesthetically pleasing that you’d think he has a personal stylist and a professional photographer on speed dial. he doesn’t even try to make his posts look good; he just rolls out of bed and somehow manages to be effortlessly cool. man could post a picture of his breakfast and it would still get more likes than your entire feed.

nara shikamaru

this lazy ass (me) would probably end up being a streamer, posting about his win streaks and achievements in every game he plays. despite barely lifting a finger to do anything else, he’d be all over social media, bragging about every victory and high score. he’s the kind of guy who’d stream his gaming marathons from the comfort of his bed, racking up followers while casually lounging around in sweatpants. If there’s a leaderboard, you can bet he’s at the top, and he’s not shy about letting everyone know it.

yamanaka ino

girlie is the famous influencer! she’s always buzzing with posts about the latest fashion trends, beauty tips, and social events. like, you know, the kind of Instagram girlie who’s always flaunting her ootd and setting style standards. she’s practically a fashion icon with every outfit she wears. she’s also the type to post inspirational messages like “wear whatever makes you feel good” or “your body, your choice.” she’s incredibly popular across all her social media platforms and has a tiktok account—she’s all about those thirst traps and dance covers.

akimichi choji

my boi would definitely be the type to either watch mukbangs obsessively or become a mukbanger himself. he’d spend hours trying to replicate recipes he’s seen online, turning his kitchen into a culinary experiment zone. and you can bet he’d be posting all about it—sharing his attempts, successes, and occasional fails. his feed would be full of mouthwatering food shots and videos of him devouring his creations, proving that he’s just as passionate about cooking and eating as he is about sharing it with the world.

tenten

she’d regularly post about her daily life, giving followers an inside look at her studies or work. her feed would be filled with a lot of photos showcasing her favorite books, snapshots of her workout routines, and candid moments with her for lifers. she’s all about fitness, making her social media a hub for health tips and personal growth. you’d see her posting everything from meal prep ideas to gym selfies. she’d be the type to inspire others with her discipline and positivity.

rock lee

lee would be the type to flood his feed with gym and fitness content, sharing everything from his daily workout routines to personal fitness goals. his posts would be packed with enthusiasm and motivational messages, like “don’t judge a person because of their appearance” and other self-improvement quotes. despite his positive energy, not everyone’s a fan—especially naruto and kiba, who might be more inclined to roll their eyes and make a shitty rant about his optimism.

hyuga neji

this dude, much like sasuke, is totally indifferent to social media. he doesn’t bother with frequent posts but when he does, they’re thoughtful and deliberate. you might see him sharing reflections on life, articles he’s stumbled upon, or insightful news about everyday occurrences. he avoids jumping into pointless online drama or trends, yet somehow, he’s always clued in. that’s thanks to lee and tenten, who can’t stop talking about the latest gossip and social media happenings. despite his apparent disinterest, he picks up on all the chatter and remains surprisingly well-informed about the buzz. so, even though he’s a low-key user, he’s never completely out of the loop.

inuzuka kiba

his socials would be about random rants and memes. he’d post exaggerated complaints about the most trivial matters. his feed would be a fucking mess of humorous and offbeat content—think sarcastic comments, goofy polls, and plenty of memes featuring akamaru. he’d frequently stir up controversies, posting impulsively and diving headfirst into debates. his online presence would be a whirlwind of arguments, especially with naruto, where they often argue over who’s the dumbest between them.

hyuga hinata

she’s the type to be a crocheter, the kind you see on tiktok with an account just for her yarn creations. her feed would be packed with posts showcasing her latest crocheting projects—everything from cozy blankets and stylish scarves to adorable amigurumi (crocheted plush toys). she’d share detailed photos and videos of her work. her account would also feature tutorials and tips for fellow crocheters, helping them improve their skills. she might post about her extensive yarn collection, offer free patterns, and give followers a peek into her crafting process. whether she’s showing off her latest masterpiece or sharing a behind-the-scenes look at her studio, her feed would be a inspiring hub for all things crochet.

aburame shino

the random entomologist on your feed. he would be all about his shit for insects and the natural world. his posts would feature photos of various bugs, often accompanied by educational captions about their behavior, ecology, and characteristics. his feed would include updates from his fieldwork, observations on insect behavior, and informative posts about conservation efforts. while he might occasionally share glimpses of his other interests or hobbies, the focus would remain firmly on nature and entomology. whether he’s showcasing a rare beetle he’s spotted or sharing insights on preserving insect habitats, his content would be a treasure trove of knowledge for fellow nature enthusiasts.

[nothingbutnowhere]

Hockey player au! Simon "Ghost" Riley headcanons. Based on the NHL

Note: suggestive of ghoap and ghoap x reader (she/her used)

Goalie. Starter. Tall, large, and most importantly: weird. Goalies are always weird, idk they just are, it's what happens when you spend half the game hanging out alone I guess

The best part of goalie Ghost is his flexibility. Have you seen how flexible goalies are? These huge, muscular men can do the splits. It's very important to me that you consider flexible Ghost, thank you.

His mask is black and white, matches his tattoos. He's the unshakable goalie, not flashy, never frustrated. Just a brick fuckin wall. If he sees it, he's going to stop it. You cannot snipe on him and score. Also his rebound control is unreal, no second chances.

He never retaliates against opposing players fucking with him because no one fucks with him due to:

His death glare, it's enough to make any and every enforcer or net nuisance shake in his skates

The Incident in the minors where he sent a guy to the hospital with a jab from his blocker and almost got kicked out of the league and banned from the NHL

On the off chance that something untoward does happen on accident, someone else will do that for him. The bond between a goalie and his defensemen cannot be understated. Ok fine. Soap. He's the defenseman, there's the spoiler.

Very superstitious, has his routines and does not deviate. Doesn't ever take his mask off on the ice, except when it breaks. Doesn't even pull it up to squirt water on his face or drink.

The loyalty that his skaters have towards him and vice versa is off the charts. Even if the media and fans don't see it, it's there. Usually guys don't speak poorly of their goalies, but this is on another level. Ferda.

Speaking of, social media people can never catch him. Like seriously where does this guy even walk in the building?? Where does he go during intermission?? Surely he practices at some point right?? He won the Veznia trophy (voted best goalie) and straight up did not show up to the ceremony.

He will go to the children's hospital to do visits with the team and the kids are either terrified or love him. Picturing him giving out the little teddy bears 😭

Caught covid despite his vigilant PPE usage (hockey locker rooms are cesspools like ew), got really sick, and developed myocarditis; ie almost died multiple times, recovered insanely fast and then just showed back up to practice one day at 100% like "put me in coach". No one outside of the trainers and locker room even knew why he was gone to begin with. Wild stuff.

Hockey players tend to tack on an '-y' or sometimes '-er' to a name for funsies but no one gets to call him 'Ghosty'. (Maybe Soap can call him that in private, as a treat 🥺)

Hockey hair status: he shaves his head boooo (not that you'd even be able to tell really with his mask and use of hats and hoods). Won't even grow out facial hair during the playoffs. Maybe if he did then he'd have a cup. Smh.

Roster pic: the meanest mug you've ever seen on a guy

Mic'd up status: everyone thinks he's unmic-able, however he's secretly telling jokes to himself when the puck is in the other zone. But no one needs to know that.

WAG status: if he had one we would never know... Right? He's always in the background of photos that Soap's girlfriend takes and posts of her and Soap? Much speculation.

...

I do NOT consent for my works, part of my works, or my ideas to be used for ANY form of AI.

Note: WAG stands for wife and girlfriend or the plural, used to refer to sports guys significant others. Yes it is heteronormative.

A/N: I'll never actually write fics for this, but I have headcanons. I know a moderate amount about hockey and next to nothing about cod so apologies. Completely unserious. Just some silly little thoughts :) plus letterkenny reference!

Edit for typo

More hockey au: Soap | Gaz | Price

[yekokataa]

Pale lore in Sacred and Terrible Air

I pulled together some of my favorite descriptions of the Pale from Kurvitz's novel. All excerpts are from the excellent fan translation by Group Ibex, which I think really nailed the style of the game in these quotes.

Warning: Full of SPOILERS and extremely LONG!

The Pale, up close:

The main characters take a road trip to the Lemminkäise zone of entroponetic catastrophe in Katla. They hire a racecar driver and drive to the very edge of the disaster zone, where matter is actively dissolving into the Pale.

The border point disappeared behind them, along with the invisible boundary of winter’s orbit, beyond which is eternal winter. The asphalt also disappeared over time; they encountered rural families on sleds along snowy gravel roads. It is their great privilege to have seen the pale with their own eyes, where it has towered behind the silo since childhood. 

Kenni sees the black mass of the forest slowly drifting into the sky. The earth crunches and cracks as the spruce trees tear themselves out of it, roots and all. The wood screams, and the frozen earth too, like they’re in a dentist’s chair. A cloud of limestone gravel flies into the air, and far above in the dark, the first trees are subsumed in the pale. 

Tereesz, Khan, and the mad Suruese driver look outside, their heads tilted back, as the pale approaches from behind the house. Inside, the bass drum thumps robustly, and outside, behind the silhouette of the building, the dark mass of the forest rolls up into the sky across the entire visible horizon. The pale rises vertically from the spruce forests like a wave, from the mountain ranges above the expanse of the world. Its horror moves slowly, humming over the world, but the world is made of matter, and matter is evergreen, ancient; it sustains itself with surprising dignity even at the moment of disappearance.

The pale can lift up entire houses! Holy shit! Our boys make a narrow escape from the edge of the encroaching pale as a house is torn away from its foundation.

In the yard, where the wheels of the motor carriage have drawn a loop in the snow, Inayat Khan looks up at a farm building that hovers above him like a ghost. Electrical wire entrails hang out of the rotating object, black against the expanse of the starry sky. It drifts on into the pale with a self-evident calm. Up above, a trail of its furniture and crumbling foundation remains. In the yard in front of him, Khan watches how a startled Tereesz and Kenni follow the object’s path, their heads tilting back until they hit the wooden fence behind them.  In a strange, panic-free concern, they all look in the direction of Ulv’s crumbling house. It seems as if every little crack comes from its limestone foundation. Soon it will rise up. But nothing happens. The pale freezes in place far away, behind the house; the creaking of the forest stops, and the music in the house also stops. Somewhere in the perceptible distance, on the edge of the frozen pale above, the farmhouse falls apart and disappears.  […] The engine revs up and the carriage’s wheels spin in the snow. The mass of the pale can no longer support its phantom weight. It breaks down. The vast clearings crumple under it in an instant, exploding with powder snow; a collapse like a shock wave whirls over the world. Spruce trees bow under the blow, and the pale blasts open the windows of the old decaying manor house. It arches around the edges of the house, as if hesitating for a moment, and then explodes together, encompassing it. The pale grabs the manor in its lap, and somewhere inside, in a room with a low ceiling, the young man puts on his headphones. He reads the sweeping pale like a magnetic reader reads a Stereo 8 tape. […] The pale blows across the fields, on both sides of the village road. Its avalanche crashes onto the gravel; the rumbling wall approaches, glowing crimson from the motor carriage’s tail lights. 

Travel through the Pale:

Floating magnet trains seem common, and they even go through the Pale. There's a brief mention that Tereesz once spent a week on a magnet train and was then told he wasn't allowed to travel for a year afterwards due to the dangers of pale exposure.

Outside on the platform, giant buffers are being pulled off the train. The umbilical cord is cut and thus, freed from the connecting bridges, the entire weight of the train with its five-fold carriage slats sinks onto the magnets. They howl at full power below the train cars. And then the flight begins.  The magnetic support splits the North Sea under it in two. It’s quiet inside, the generators humming as the train whizzes by fifty metres above the water. The three of them stand together, laughing. Tereesz extinguishes his smoke in a bronze ashtray, and they turn their back on the observation windows. Ahead, the pale awaits, and past it begins a big world. […] Through the windows, all that’s left of the city behind them is the light pollution, a golden glow in the distant darkness of the snowstorm. 

This floating train station has an illustration Rostov by the way.

For a historical travel example: the famous disappearance of the airship Harnankur. This airship was referenced in the game in the form of the 50-real vodka in the special edition commemorative bottle! Rostov's illustration from the novel is here, showing a model of the ship in Khan's basement.

One hundred and fifty years ago, on another isola—the Graad isola—it snows in the city of Mirova. It’s a midwinter evening, but thousands of people have gathered in the harbour. The quay bustles with them. In the background lies imperial Graad—church steeples and chimneys. The crowd is waving, bidding farewell to the airship rising into the sky. A swan made of wood and nickel rises into the blizzard, and the passengers of the world’s first interisolary flight wave to the crowd from its balcony baskets: well-dressed boujee people, with a never-before-seen adventure ahead of them. It’s the pale—terrifying, but at the same time such an upbeat and unforgettable experience. Modern technology, in the form of a luxuriously upholstered airship, now makes such an experience possible for an ordinary, if perhaps slightly better off, citizen. And on the other side of the pale—oh mystical pale!—the land of Katla awaits, with its royal capital of Vaasa.  […] Two days later, the interisolary flight enters the pale, and then, barely six hours later, a deviation occurs in the airship’s course. “Harnankur” has gone missing with fifteen hundred passengers on board. The flight is believed to have drifted into an uncharted entroponetic mass, the pale superdeep. 

Sound

The pale makes a hissing sound. Here Khan receives a phone call from one of the missing presumed dead girls, who may be a ghost or part of the pale, it's all left very ambiguous. It reminds me of the part in the game where you can call Slipstream SCA and hear a ghost trapped in the phone.

He picks up the receiver, and the hallway fills with the hiss of the pale. It grates in his ear.  “Hello?” asks Khan. But no one answers. “Hello, who is it? Please tell me who you are!” he repeats, more and more pleading each time. The hissing becomes louder and louder, until finally it deafens him, the pressure in his inner ear goes awry, and only that vibration from who-knows-where remains, its centre. The silence goes through his flesh and bones like waves. It’s cold. 

Later, we learn that the pale can actually come through the phone lines?? Creepy!

The speaker switches to a long-distance call; the pale seeps into the hall air from the fabric-covered ziggurat. The signal runs as an entroponetic sequence through the Great Unknown, from Katla to Graad. Relay stations clear the call from the noise of history along the way, but something always creeps into the wires—a ghost radio station. Its quiet voice in its unintelligible language reminds us what it’s here for. To end life. 

It's also similar to the sounds of the pale latitude compressor! During a long distance call through the pale, a voice is heard spelling things out using an “international alphabet” like the real-world NATO phonetic alphabet.

This is how matter degrades, drop by drop, like an analog rhythm running from red through the colourless world. The international alphabet is hidden in the low-frequency waves, “... Nadir-Ellips-Gamut-Azimuth...” and so on, to the border of the settlement. 

Culture, ideology

Zigi as a teen is a total edgelord when it comes to talking about the pale:

But above all, Zigi is still a nihilist. He reads dia-mat [dialectical materialism], says that animals are automatons, is a fan of behaviourism, and adores the pale and the nihilistic innocence of Mesque, Ambrosius Saint-Miro. […] The geography teacher sent him to the principal’s office, and Zigi stopped at the door, the zippers of his leather jacket jingling. “See you in the pale,” he said, and ran his index finger across his throat. Back when entroponetics was not discussed at school, many people gathered around Zigi during recess, and the corridor echoed with his half-truths: “The pale is made of the past,” he said. “All the lost things are jumbled up there, sad and abandoned. The pale is the world’s memory of the world. It accumulates matter and sweeps away everything in its path. This is what’s called entroponetic collapse.”  “But when will it happen, Zigi?" “Yes, Zigi, when?” “It will happen in your lifetime, little Olle. At least, I hope so. History swallows the present; the world of matter disappears, desaparecido... That’s why there’s no point in our generation going to school. There will be no future. When you grow up, don’t have children like your underdeveloped bourgeois parents did. You’ll get to see them die, and that’s it. Compared to the pale, there’s only a small amount of the world left! In the end, the isolas will sink, dozens and hundreds of square kilometres of land mass, can you even imagine? Like a ship keeling over into the pale. Fwooom...” Zigi makes a sinking ship gesture with his hands, the zippers of his leather jacket jingling; the children gasp. “Don’t worry, Olle, this will be the peak of humanity.” 

In the game, Zigi's brand of entroponetic nihilism gets two very brief (and kind of hidden) mentions, where it's named as entropolism. I've got those quotes saved in my post here.

Waves

The pale seems very wave-like in that scene where it lifts a house, and apparently it's also like a wave according to science:

“It’s an oceanographic myth. The Killer Wave.” Little Khan points in the direction of the body of water. The four of them watch from the safe warmth of a beach towel. Insects buzz in the dark, around the gas lanterns. “For a long time it was just that—a myth, a sailor’s tale. Arda even has a mythological name for it: ‘halderdingr’. But now they’re a scientifically documented phenomenon, they really exist, you understand? This explains the dozens, hundreds of missing ships. […] “And you know what’s the most fucked up thing about it?” Khan asks slyly. He wipes his diamaterialist glasses and then puts them back on. His almond eyes squint behind the magnifying lenses, filled to the brim with popular science mystique. “The same effect—don’t ask me how, I don’t know—but the same non-linear effect also explains the pale. They use it in entroponetics. This is how the pale behaves when it sweeps over the world.” 

Mold

I've heard that in Estonian the word used for Pale is Hall, meaning both frost and mold, like a pale gray film that covers the surface of things. As the Pale takes Vaasa, fruits begin to grow mold. Some people choose to stay rather than leave the disaster zone.

The panic has cooled. In the strange indifference of the evacuation, whole families stay behind in Vaasa. There they play board games, in their houses, in their spacious apartments. They love vitamin-rich food, and when the pale is only a few days away, it’s always signalled by the same beautiful event. Fruits go mouldy. It grows vigorously on them. Children listen to oranges crackling on the table. Spores sprout from the pulp, apples are hairy with it. If you try to touch them, they crack open. No one knows why it’s like that. But few can muster the energy to be afraid of that time, and that’s why I say it’s beautiful. 

And later, when Zigi is living in a forest that's been taken by the Pale, even the animals have been consumed by it although they're still alive:

And to the dark forest, to the museum of natural history, where mould grows on the horns of the males and puffs of steam no longer rise from the kids’ nostrils. They still breathe—not oxygen, but pure pale. 

Turning into a protein mass

The mother of the missing girls sits in her home, waiting for the pale to take her:

Ann-Margret Lund also sits there somewhere in her kitchen, in the middle of the pale; her rooms are quiet and clean. The former teacher wears a beige jacket and an above-the-knee skirt, and watches the moulding apricots. […] Like everyone else, she can’t do anything in this extended stay, where one’s sense of the present slowly drifts away. But whereas the others dissolve into their memories, she simply disappears. It’s as if her life had never happened. The past is not awaiting her return. She just wanders around the rooms, adjusts her grandmother’s lace doily and bedspreads, arranges the curtains on the rails. And thus, tastefully, she refuses to indulge in those ecstasies which visit the human spirit when the world is disintegrating. Nothing leaves her hands, and nothing returns.  When Katla finally sinks into the pale, Ann-Margret Lund turns, without the slightest pleasure, into a protein mass. 

Hanging out in the Pale with the ghost of Ignus Nielsen

Years later, as an adult, Zigi has become immune to the effects of the Pale, and even stays in the middle of it in a tent, hanging out with the cytoplasmic spirit of a dead communist.

Human speech sounds out of place in the silence of the pale. It echoes in the gloom of the trees as Zygismunt trudges through the snow. There’s an old trick coined by the great entroponaut K. Voronikin, that you have to shout in the pale. Otherwise, you start to feel gloomy, and the past comes up. But Zygismunt needn’t be afraid of that. When he first entered the pale, he discovered to his great dismay that he couldn’t return like everyone else. Or rather—he could, but not where he really wants. This makes him indispensable to Mazov’s idea. The disappearance of the Lund children has literally given Zigi special entroponetic powers. 

He goes hunting for pale-poisoned ibexes. The phrase ‘protein mass’ comes up again. It seems that any human or animal in the pale for long enough eventually turns into a protein mass.

The entroponaut shakes himself. Snow falls from the shoulders of the anorak coat. He goes on alone. An hour of frozen machine tracks and hoofprints in the snow run along in the flashlight beam. And when a herd of ibex finally emerges from the darkness, they are frozen in place in the middle of the road, like an exhibit in a natural history museum. Some of the females sometimes jerk in place, sneezing; this is a nervous impulse, a muscle tremor. The backs of the stuffed animals are already covered with snow, but their snouts are still steaming, they’re still breathing—some for a few days, some for a week. An anorak-clad figure moves through the herd with the indifference of a professional until the beam of his flashlight casts the alpha male’s crown of horns as a shadow on the wall of spruce trees. Zygismunt looks into the animal’s glazed eyes. Its sense of time has broken down. An automaton’s primitive fragment of a brain strays in the pale faster than that of a human. This is how hunters from the outskirts go hunting in the entrokataa. Of course, they’ll eventually go mad from it as well, and one day they won’t return. But not Zigi, he has special abilities. He takes a pocket knife from his belt and slits the protein mass’s throat. 

[evilminji]

I recently read your DPxDC post comparing the Ghost Zone to Yggdrasil.

Ans I've been playing Elden Ring again lately, mostly because the Lore in it keeps dragging me back.

And I think you'd like the concept of Erdtree Burial. It even matches up with your post.

Imma try my best to explain the concept so Spoiler starts here:

-------------

Anyways, so Erdtree Burial means to take a recently dead body of someone who committed grand feats and/or is worthy of honor, and place them to rest amidst the roots of the Erdtree (which is basically Yggdrasil vut legally distinct).

The Tree itself will then take the soul and memory of the deceased and etch them upon itself, preserve their soul and remember them.

----------------

What if the Erdtree is that world's link to the World Between Worlds?

So, can you imagine all these Elden Ring Demigods, Honourable Dead and Great Fighters occasionally taking a leisurely stroll out of their Afterlife Home amidst the branches of the Erdtree to go visit the Ghosts that live in the Zone?

Random giant dude passes by, twin Greatswords at his back, and goes to grab a whole 20 barrels of ecto-ale to bring back to his friends.

Danny, coming back from visiting Clockwork, has to do a double take, and ask the bartender some questions.

"While was that guy? He looked a little too golden to be a Ghost"

"Ah, that's just Radahn. He says he's a General or something. That he once held back the stars all by himself. Apparently fought some wars, and they still needed like 20 great warriors fighting together to put him down after he went senile. Hogwash, if you ask me."

Danny hears that the guy used to throw hands with celestial bodies regularly, and knows exactly where he'll be for summer vacation.

If the Tarnished player character is already Elden Lord by then, I can definitely see Danny coming back wearing the Twinned Armor set.

(Especially if it's my Strength/Faith/Arcane character. She used the Butcher's Knife greataxe, with the Stormcaller Ash of War and a Bleed enchantment, plus Rot Dragon and Black Flame spells)

Hello yes! I DO enjoy this thought! You were ABSOLUTELY correct!

Haven't played the game? But? Now? I CAN NOT get the idea of the Zone itself being The Erdtree out of my head?

Great and endless. With roots and manifestations, that may or may not reach into the world it cradles, that will imprint upon itself souls of those buried close. That it may cherish them FOREVER.

Are we within in it? Held by it? Consumed? It is not for our mortal minds to know. Perhaps not even for gods to know.

But, oh. OH! What made Danny so DIFFERENT? No answer found in his world. No answer found anywhere near it. Yet? Here they know it. A simple answer, given freely. It feels almost unfair. Like he has been cheated of catharsis. As though he should have had to fight and scrape and FORCE them to speak.

They can not even begin to understand, what it is like. Being so alone.

Or maybe... maybe they can.

He's not sure which he wants more. Which he fears is true.

For what was the portal? If not sharp blade cut into the celestial earth? Plunging into starlight soil and primordial soup, to the tangled roots of something greater. A tree. THE tree. Dragging back that soil and nicking those tightly woven, buried things. A welling of ichor, golden and green and DIVINE.

A plunging of that blade into his heart.

His lifeblood with the tree's.

A pathway where none could ever have been.

Oh, what rituals we blindly perform. Our ignorance of their meaning does not give them less power, only leaves us unguarded. It does not have to be on ancient stages and with ancient things, to be a ritual. It can be a laboratory. A machine instead of a ritual blade.

Still a thing forged by Father's and Mother's hand, that killed the Son.

And then Again, through the twist of Time, by dear friends hand, first in ignorance now twice in knowing, killed again.

Twice Half Dead, Is A Corpse. And Thus, With The Tree.

Cradled and loved. Etched forever into itself. Perhaps even a bit more so, for the difficulties of his birth. For how rarely does the Erdtree bleed. How rarely the Zone spill its Divine blood. A little starlit snowflake, flitting along its many paths. Cradled in its heart. So clever and bright.

The problem, I imagine? Is that such a Divinity? Has a very distinct nature. You give unto them. They take. They cherish. They do not return.

And Danny is being a Trouble Child. Sneaking off into Worlds, mostly his own, and NOT staying in the Zone. The Tree's domain. Other Gods have power in those places! Child, cease! That is dangerous! It is like a mermaid deciding to go climb the alps. Even if she CAN make legs for herself, that is WAY to far from the safety of her God's domain! Are you mad, child!? Have you heard of acceptable Risk?!

Danny has. It made a whooshing noise as he tossed it out the window.

[musicbuttonsandcake]

As the nights get longer and summer starts to feel like it might be over, I'm beginning to turn my attention to the wonderful festive season that is the British Autumn TV Schedule! There are many things I'm excited about. If you also get excited about one or more of these things and want to chat or like make sure I'm following you or something go for it! And if you want me to use specific tags so you can make sure to avoid spoilers or seeing stuff that you are not personally excited about please let me know and I'll do my best. I don't normally watch things live as my time zone and work schedule conspire against me so I'm constantly blocking and unblocking tags and keywords.

The shows I'm excited for include:

Doctor Who 💙💙

Bake Off

Strictly

Taskmaster

Ghosts

House of Games (relatedly but not TV I'm also looking forward to the new Thursday Murder Club book)

[blametheeditor]

Day 29 | Sweet Tooth

Gt July Prompt List

First | Previous

When stranded on an uncharted underwater planet, alone and surrounded by hostile lifeforms, there are only two possible outcomes: adapt and survive, or die trying.

Spoilers: For the game Subnautica

Content Warnings: Cursing. Mentions of death and violence. Mentions of drowning and suffocation.

________________________

“Someone’s here!” 

Eggs lazily opens an eye at the announcement. Smiles as a guppy no bigger than his finger swims down to him. “Who is it? Vincent?” 

They shake their head as they gesture deeper into the cave system. “No, it’s a new guppy!”

A new guppy? He wasn’t expecting any more eggs to hatch for a while now. Not that he’s disappointed, just surprised! Unless a ghost finally hatched, he’s been keeping an eye on them but he’s not an expert when it comes to those leviathans. Or, maybe there’s a new reaper that got sent down here so they’ve got plenty of company. 

Eggs stretches as he carefully sits up. “What kind of guppy?” 

“I don’t know, but they looked fun! Can I play with them?” 

He taught everyone about all the different leviathans, right? It’s dangerous for dragons to leave the lava zones before they reach a certain age, but he bribed a reaper to come down to the river so the guppy’s could be educated. Then again, did he do that after the last batch had hatched or before? Has it been too long and they just forgot? 

“Do they have a short tail?” Eggs asks as he beckons the little one to follow him. Slowly starts making his way toward the lake, keeping in mind tiny tentacles can’t keep up if he swims too quickly. 

“They had two tails.” 

He mouths the word ‘two’ as he tries to figure out why it made his scales crawl. There’s a possibility someone hatched a little too early. He might’ve failed to introduce a reaper and the split tail might’ve been confusing. 

Ooh, no, he remembers Vincent talking about two tails! Except they aren’t tails, or even tentacles. It was something only humans- 

Eggs freezes, quickly curling his hand protectively around the guppy to stop them from swimming any further. “You know what, guppy? Let’s find everyone before we go meet them, okay?” 

There’s an adorable pout that on any other day he would’ve immediately cave into. But he’s trying to protect that expression. Make sure he can see it again tomorrow, and a thousand times more. “Okay...” 

“I know, not a fun answer,” the dragon rumbles as he turns back toward the rock spires, guppy held close to his heart so they don’t get left behind as he searches for one of the older leviathans. “I’ll make it up to you, pinky promise.” 

Miniscule arms wrap around his pinky finger to say his swear has been sealed. With that taken care of, he finally spots a large shape moving through the water. Roars for the other to come over. 

“What’s wrong?” 

“I need you to round everyone up,” Eggs instructs. Gently offers the guppy in hand over to be taken, something that’s done without a single question. 

Because Eggs using his superiority as being the eldest dragon? Challenge him all you’d like, especially when he can prove why he’s the best. But Eggs being serious with absolutely no nonsense? Something is horribly wrong. 

“Take them up to the river?” 

“Yes, everyone. Don’t come back down until I say.” 

He’s fixed with a hard stare. “Don’t get killed.” 

Eggs gives a smile before quickly swimming toward the lakes. “I won’t!” 

A human. How did he let a human get passed him! Even a guppy had spotted them before he did, and this is his territory! Vincent’s going to kill him. 

Not before he demands just who this human thinks they are. Sneaking past him of all leviathans. Thinking they can come down here without so much as introducing themselves. Is this even their first time being down this deep? Have his guppy’s been bribed not to tell him about a mysterious visitor with fish! 

Whatever the reason is for not so much as telling Eggs they’re here, it can’t be to capture or kill leviathans. If it was, the guppy who saw the human wouldn’t have been able to tell him. He would’ve noticed during his daily headcounts to make sure everyone is accounted for some had gone missing. Vincent would’ve warned him as soon as possible if everything was starting again. 

Just because they haven’t hurt any of the guppy’s under his care doesn’t mean he can let a human roam around the ocean unsupervised. Certainly not in the lava zones where precious and vulnerable eggs and hatchlings are. 

Eggs carefully scans the water and the seafloor as he swims. Stops at every possible crevice where a human can potentially be hiding. Stays silent so as not to warn them that he’s approaching. 

Then he sees it. A tiny form darting close to the lakes of lava. Heading straight for the glowing structure Vincent told him countless stories about what lies inside. 

Panic wells inside him, and Eggs rushes forward, needing to stop the human before they get inside. “Hey, wait!” 

He knows they heard him, the tiny shoulders jump exactly like guppy’s do whenever they’re caught doing things they shouldn’t be doing. They don’t stop, though. They’re almost to the building. 

Eggs opens his mouth, spitting out flames with the want to hinder not kill. His aim passes over them, causing lava to spray in a few directions meant to at the very least slow down the human. Maybe even make them panic and freeze so he can scoop them up. 

It doesn’t stop them. No, they took it as a challenge and almost effortlessly dodged everything. The current, the balls of fire, the lava. If anything it made them faster. In a last ditch effort, Eggs lunges forward using every muscle he has. Reaches out to snatch the human into his hand. 

He misses by an inch. Crashes into the structure, groaning in pain as it feels like his head is going to split open. Had there always been two tiny entrances, or is that just him? 

Eggs hisses through his teeth as he massages his head, waiting for the world to stop spinning. Looks down to see no trace of the human. They didn’t even have the decency to check and make sure he didn’t crack a tooth. 

Staring at the odd barrier, he reaches a hand inside to see if he can snag them. Wrinkles his nose at the feeling of being dry, but tries to feel around to see if he’ll touch something that’s alive. There’s nothing, though. It’s clear the human didn’t stick around. 

“This is not innocent behavior,” Eggs pouts as he takes his hand back. Watches the empty space for a moment. “Look, I’m not going to hurt you, you’ve just been acting suspicious!” 

Silence. 

“Well aren’t you high and mighty. Don’t tell the people who live here you’re intruding.” 

Still nothing. 

“Well fine then!” 

With that, Eggs pushes himself away, using the structure to speed through the water. Toward the river, back to the guppy’s that could still be in danger. He doesn’t even have to say a word once he’s back, the other three full grown dragons only watching him worriedly. 

What kind of brother is he? He’s supposed to keep them safe, yet that’s the exact opposite of what happened. The opposite of what he’s about to do. Put responsibilities on their shoulders only he’s supposed to carry. 

“Can we play with the guppy, Eggs?” a soft voice asks. The same one that told him that he had failed his job as the eldest. 

His heart breaks as he sweeps the tiny thing up to hug against his cheek. “I’m afraid not.” 

“Do they not want to play?” 

“You sweet little thing,” he murmurs. How dare that human hurt someone so precious! “They’re just shy. I’m sure they’ll want to play later, though.” 

There’s no response. Oooooh, that human’s going to pay. 

Eggs gently frees the guppy. “I’m going to get help. Stay here and keep everyone close.” 

He’s only given nods. He carefully swims up through the vast cave systems, moving as quick as he can without accidentally running into anyone. Past the river, up through the trenches, shivering as the cold water chills him to the bone. But he doesn’t so much as pause, darting out into the open water as daylight burns his eyes as he swims as fast as possible toward the blood kelp zone. 

He needs to tell Vincent it's starting again.

[macgyvertape]

Thoughts on TFS Campaign

please note spoilers for everything

Gameplay:

It only lasted for less than a day but the launch errors were so bad. Not just Battleye disconnects during fights, but Prismatic unlock being bugged, and completely missing cutscenes after missions. It was enough to ruin the experience so waiting to play it was absolutely worth it. I guess it's a sign of there being a lot more moving pieces on the backend than is apparent when things go smoothly.

I’m amazed at the shifting environment inside the Traveler and the dev work it took to do that. Not just creating new paths, but the environment terraforming as you run. The map design is amazing: it's a hill and it's a statue of a cat, its a tree but its also person shaped. Thrilled by how many creepy faces there are in the map, and how the horror and faces just ramp up as the zone continues. The highway where the underside was just hands was one of the more fucked up ones for me

I like that the game warns you if you leave the campaign to the Tower. Plus the “End Draws Near” buff was appropriately ominous

Also if there is “social” Tower what about “Legend” Tower, or “Grandmaster” Tower lol

Mission 3 where you’re locked in with a room of sword arm guys took some adjusting to. Really like how the shooty eye blast Orge fight was set up in mission 3. Good intro of mechanics, how it will absolutely fuck you up, then it comes together in the final fight where the different types of ads help the combat loop. I’m getting a lot of use from “gain armor charge from breaking shields”

The Dissent mission was the point where I couldn’t solo Legend campaign anymore. The Ogres were fine, but I don’t do great in small rooms with little cover and enemies that rush at you. It's noticeable where earlier missions have a much shorter repeat run back section when you die than this mission. 

Final mission was rough due to a lot of mechanics and a long final fight with little room for error. I’m glad the random cool person I found for the previous mission was such a good sport since it took about an hour.

This is the most mechanics heavy expansion so far, they introduced each mechanic through earlier missions: blights, VotD style symbols tracking, VoG relic shield, RoN shoot the darkness seeds, kill 3 giant hive knights on a time limit like Shattered Throne. That’s just a lot of mechanics to juggle while dealing with prismatic shields and aggressive Dread enemies

Overall I enjoyed Legendary Campaign on my Warlock, haven’t finished it on the other classes. Outbreak Perfected fucking shredded especially combined with Chromatic Fire

The new Suspectrum Heavy LFR is way too visually similar to Taipan. Wish the icon was at least a different color. I do like the art on the new craftable campaign weapons. 

I appreciate that with Ghost as the vendor I can easily swap ghost shells to see what the damage looks like on different ones. Like Sagira’s Shell (for the angst) or Last City Shell (Damaged).

There were so many post campaign story missions, I appreciate how they filled out narrative threads that didn’t fit in the base campaign but also all quests now can be right clicked to be launched

The post raid 12 person activity was great. I've been wanting a 12 player activity to be introduced ever since the time of 12 person raid bug, and it felt an appropriately “epic” scale with no raid context needed

It would be cool to see a flowchart of all the musical callbacks in TFS, I’m recognizing a lot even if I don’t know the track names

This expansion really felt cinematic, a grand finale. I love how many cutscenes both artistic and pre-rendered there were, capped off with the final post raid cutscene. My favorites were of course the ending cutscene but also the opening hawk covered in goo cutscene to set the tone

Story Thoughts under cut

Love the hawk being back and notes of Journey from the D2 base campaign

The guardian taking critical damage when Ghost gets possessed in Temptation really added to the feel. Glad to get one more story beat of Crow angst

Crow and Cayde going back and forth with banter makes it a lot more tolerable than just Cayde the funnyman. Also a fun bit of “3 sharpest hunters” when I played Hunter

Ikora’s reaction/processing of Cayde being “alive” had a lot more emotional impact for me than the Guardian reuniting with him. Of course Cayde did it in the most dramatic way possible

TARGE!!!! Excited to hear him in game. Love the visuals of the Witness smoke coming from the family house

I’m glad that Zavala’s character got so developed over the seasonal storylines, it makes the pathos of his encounter here so much stronger. He’s one of the big emotional anchors of the story and while Keith David does a great job filling in as Zavala it feels awkward considering out of game context to hear Zavala talk about dying and not making it back

The cynical part of me thought; ok narratively there’s been a moment to be sad about Cayde 6, sad about Zavala’s dead family, sad about Amanda. Are we going to get narratively sad about Rasputin? (edit: nope)

That Cayde came back from Crow’s wish was something I thought had been heavily hinted at?? Like it wasn’t a surprise to me. 

It would be cool to see a flowchart of all the musical callbacks in TFS, I’m recognizing a lot even if I don’t know the track names

Holy shit mean Zavala, but I like how the Guardian then gets called out for listening on the radio unlike any other time they snoop in this or last expansions on deeply personal conversations

I’d like to wish a very happy Luzaku to all Hive/Guardian shippers

“I’m yours, and you’re mine” I love Ghost this expansion and how it really touches on the long partnership. Ghost is really only a character in the expansions and this expansion was great for that emotional arc

Liminality Strike crossed the line from Zavala reacting poorly in a moment of stress/grief to “Out of Character is serious business”. It was heavily foreshadowed before that Zavala isn’t doing well and something will happen to Zavala, by the end of the season I hope he gets some ending that has him at peace

“They’ll speak up if they have something to say, that’s what I do” Targe has been lore only so long, he’s even better than I thought with voice acting how he speaks with a kinda decisiveness.

Damn RIP Targe the game got me to fall in love with him in such a short time. Deeply hilarious IMO that then we got a lore page from Immaru

The statues that look like a sheet-ghost were always kinda creepy, but the ceremony where they were falling down dead and it looked much more like funeral shrouds for living beings made them soooooo much creepier

Keeping with the theme of OOC is Serious Business, it was noticeable when The Witness lost its cool and anger/aggravation was clear in its tone

The Iron Lord sigil and the axe in Temptation was the first reference to Crow being the last Iron Lord in a long time, very cool to then see him summon a flaming axe at the end. 

Ikora was a supporting character this expansion, but the writing really showed how she is a necessary part of the Vanguard fireteam

Postgame:

Excited to see Micah-10 another favorite previously lore only character

Queens Part 1: Very in character of Savathun show up uninvited, to have her hostile forces with their own agenda at the precipice and almost end of all things. “My Guardian. My Friend” Transactional relationship for now until she decides she no longer owes us, the style of Hive violence as love. Fits right in with the Star Jasmine lore. I love her.

Queens Part 2: I was really smiling listening to Savathun and Mara go back and forth sniping at each other and being catty. I love when Mara isn’t nice! 

Can’t believe the Mithrax missions introduced “escort NPCs and keep them alive” style missions. In aggravating tradition, player healing mechanisms do nothing. Just like the meme of “aren’t you tired of being nice” exciting seeing him lose his shit, yell ANSWER ME, then avenge his mother by dropping a Brig on the enemy guy

Caiatl quests: love when she fights alongside us, really enjoyed the furthering of her and Zavala’s relationship as leaders. Incredibly gallows humor that Zavala’s dead family farm is just a permanent part of the Pale Heart.

I really liked the Crow/Cayde camping quest, it felt very much like the Guardian was living through investigating and being with these characters vs drop in, fight, and leave. Sort of like how FF14 Shadowbringers had your character narratively go to the inn to rest.

SCUR-V and Halsiks my friends in the final mission!!! Loved seeing all of our allies fight alongside us, then seeing so many cameos from characters in the cutscenes

Guess the vanguard does make people shave their head lol, I will miss his old look as I loved the bird chaperon style hood with cape

Great way to end the expansion and this storyline of Destiny; Ghost and Guardian sitting together peacefully staring at the Traveler with riffs from Deep Stone Lullaby playing

[silviakundera]

The Spirealm episode 5 reaction

Using the new 38 episode configuration.

(this is a spoiler zone - I read the novel and will reference it, with full book storyline spoilers)

The creepy daughters birthday party! Wheeee I enjoyed this door in the novel.

Have they eliminated the option of winning automatically by being the lone survivor? I feel like that rule was revealed by this point in the novel. I hope it's not gone because it provided more justification for other players to have secret agendas and the risk of being manipulated as part of someone else's long game. One thing the novel did well was set up paranoia & subterfuge as being the only smart response to navigating through the cases. (Also the rule that the monster will only eat so many at a time before getting full, so you can trick others into being sacrifices to increase your personal odds... and then how that common strategy backfires on a case at the very end!)

Both in the novel and the drama I am amused by how obviously the contrast is between Ruan Nanzhu's treatment of his pretty actress client and Lin Quishi. From dodging rooming with her to jerking away from her attempts to get close, while constantly being approachable & touchy towards LQ. Especially funny because that poor girl is just terrified & wants guidence. (omgggg all her sleeping on the floor scenes from the novel 😭😂 )

The chemistry is chemistrying.

If I'm being honest, the romance plotline is working for me so far in a way that the novel wasn't quite hitting at this juncture. It's just personal taste on these things, but so far I prefer drama!Ruan Nanzhu's subtle flirtations and angling to increase intimacy... and I do think a lot of it is in both actors' performances. I feel a wry warmth from Lin Quishi, like he's secretly quietly delighted to be singled out for this attention and though he doesn't know what to do with it, and keeps soft-probing on why it's happening to him, why him? ...he doesn't want it to stop. And through the drama's more omniscient POV, we witness a bit more vulnerability and affection from Ruan Nanzhu when in the novel you had to read between the lines within what Lin Quishi was experiencing.

The Lin Quishi foolproof ghost defeating action plan of 🙈🙉🙊 strikes again.

Then Ruan Nanzhu pop up in an appropriately romance ML move to block LQ from being smacked around by a fail player. [see gif set]

"I told you not to be a good man. Come back with me."

Still love the display of how crafty RN is, to not only identity the importance of the triplets name but also set up a trick to name them.

Looking forward to him outsmarting the agents from X.

LMAO the comparision shot of Tan Zaozao anxiously sitting hunched over her clutched egg vs chill Ruan Nanzhu leaning vs Lan Quishi casually tossing & catching his.

Exhibit A: Alone with room to themselves: sit on the bed side by side, why lean or walk & talk

Exhibit B:

The way the tone is completely different whenever these 2 can section themselves off alone or to the side, HELLO THERE 👁👄👁

Anyway, we end on suspense! Trapped in a room and dependant on their hapless client. then a taboo crack in the egg! *gasp*

Next Episode

[crisp-nightime-air]

Here are me and my gf favourite dndaddies quotes. (Up until season 2 episode 23)

**spoilers to come

“I’m hungry and I kinda wanna fuck”

“He is my seed!!!”

“I burned down my first school!!”

“Who wants grape nuts?”

“No one!!!”

“Now two sad bags of bones that used to be people with hopes and dreams”

“Natures orgasm”

“Jizz likely”

“I’m wearing the condoms Ron!!!”

“ the Birkenstock’s were in you all along”

“If we all get into the fanny pack then the bear can get into the van”

“Daryl what do your dilf eyes see”

“Is that a d4 in your pocket or are you just that poorly endowed”

“It’s like watching a man chase down his very specific kink through tabletop role play”

“It’s role play masturbation”

“I can’t respect your choices when you don’t make good ones”

“You find more knives than not knives”

“Look at my butt hole dad”

“Yea look at his butthole”

“Balfazar drop me a fat ass poem”

“So your edging your cat??!???”

“Get yourself together the snake is dying”

“Sticks and stones may break my bones but chains and whips excite me”

“Dick daddy”

“My cat has never nutted and will never nut”

“We don’t need seat belts where we’re going”

“The horse doesn’t get the money, Glenn”

“Mountain don’t think, mountain do”

“It’s like a bra for your penis”

“A bunch of sexualised but private part not having felines”

“Do they have BUTTHOLES??”

“I’m hard rock big huge”

“Eldritch candy emergency”

“The entire episode is spent inside Darrell's butt”

“The curious case of the poop in the bathroom”

“John the Baptist flipping through the Old Testament “ain’t no rules says it can’t happen””

“A homunculus made of confidence and urine”

“Trapped in a piss boy”

“Frankly my dear I don’t have a frank”

“You do the hokey pokey and you turn into an eight year old”

“Don’t you ,forget about yeet”

“Human sized bird on a tiny pony”

“I’m fully cocked”

“I hate it when I go to the grocery store looking for Tapatío and they’re like “We only have Old Assblower” and I’m like “Okay, fine.”

“A brief encounter with a problematic vampire”

“Father! The after life…it is dark”

“Because Glenn could not stop for Death, we kindly killed Glenn”

“I’m burnt out from caring”

“Tell me it’s comic sans and I will cum”

“Never send a Matt to do a Glenn’s work”

“Why don’t you come down here and punish me daddy”

“I’m not that easily penetrated”

“That’s the last time you gonna see anybody come”

“I don’t have to be nice I’m aerodynamic”

“A Real man belongs in a mouth”

“It’s like my dick, my ass, and my balls have all seen a ghost”

“Does your butt look like house md now”

“Down with the immigrant”

“Matt nipple play Arnold”

“I’m Beth miracle nip May”

“You can finger something without touching the sharp end”

“Goblin? On deez nuts??!!????!?”

“Women are friends not cubes”

“You can’t really do a battle cry on resolving conflict”

“Tomorrow might be m for mature but today is for e for everyone”

“You couldn’t do 30 seconds of childhood”

“FOMO fire opportunity murder other thing”

“I turn to my directionless hippie family”

“Disenfranchised acolytes of oakvale”

“My daddy is god! My daddy is god!”

“I am willing to psychically dominate your father”

“If it’s a private school…..how do you know about it?”

“Say something racist William campos”

“Have you ever watched a porn?????? No one wants to see the guys face!!!!!”

“I got a detention in my pants”

“You see in order…..the same man twice and a boy that’s wrong”

“My husband is an heiress”

“The Apple doesn’t fall far from the weeb”

“Goth the friend zone iguana”

“We clocked the teen boy at 30 miles an hour”

“Coming out of my mom and I was feeling just fine”

“Scorpion slut”

“I have never pleasures a woman in my life and I don’t plan on starting now”

“Dick Spencer’s the name dick pleasures the game”

“It’s time for centrist vegan ice cream”

“I don’t think the fbi can help with this growth”

“My one dad left because he saw how gross the growth is”

“That means they’ve listened to me jerkoff 67 times”

“A routeeny”

“I’m not the smartest kid in the shed”

“This hole was made for me”

“I’m gonna wrap my vajay around your neck”

“You hit him directly with your vagina”

“Let the yeast do its thing”

“I love to please when I get head to…damn”

“The raccoons name is laaannhehahheh”

“Can you order calzone people?

Oh yea like a stripper”

“Jsut order party calzones!!”

“Does he want sentient or none sentient calzones?

He said he doesn’t want feet on them”

“You see the price on the recipe after we charge you”

“The sensual ghost Italian music playing in the back”

“A woman shat in the bathroom”

“You wanna slide inside a calzone with dad”

“To old to share a calzone with your papa”

“It’s not gonna be pleasant in that calzone”

“I have returned to the woomussy”

“Deep inside your pizzussy”

“Hi my name is Matt Arnold known misogynist”

Hi I’m will campos known woman lover”

“Hi I’m Beth may known woman”

“My first kiss was a threesome”

“You hear the sphincter of the cat open”

“Guys act like calzones!!”

“There’s a nipple on the bus hot shot”

“My neck, my back, MY PUSSY BUS!!”

“New you would pussy out you would pussy in”

“Don’t get cocky kid this is the only pussy you’re ever getting in”

“The dick kids don’t fall far from the dick tree”

“It’s been two days since you last jerked”

“She Johnny on my Apple tell I seed”

“What ever revs your engine as long as I get to drive the car”

“Come here baby and hold your body against mine and rub it around a little bit”

“”We‘ll talk about in a second” is the Wilson fucking family crest”

[panurei-derogatory]

Hey guys I can't sleep so you're all going to hear my thoughts/theories about the lore of pizza tower in no particular order

Obviously spoilers to the game, the story is hardly important to the gameplay but I'd highly recommend you go into the game as fresh as possible. In case you haven't heard already, the game's fucking phenomenal and you should've played it yesterday at this point

POINT ONE: The Pizza Tower is something that has existed for a significant amount of time before the events of the game, as it seems The Vigilante has lived here for a while. We see this mostly in the refrigerator level, where it looks like snowmen have been left there resembling his late father/grandfather present as a ghost during his bossfight. Either the vigilante GREW UP here over some time (how long is a cheese blob's lifespan?), or these are left here as a means of honoring his parental figure. Vigilante also knows where to find the Noisette Cafe, which is hidden very well, so he's been here long enough to know the places ins and outs. This explains why he's invested in this place enough to take up an anti-hero role of defense, as he's grown very fond of the place. This ties somewhat into point two:

POINT TWO: The Pizza Tower's purpose is likely some sort of resort, if not a place of permanent residence. At least, that's what it was initially designed as before falling into some degree of disrepair (mainly in the slums). It has everything a guest would need- different kinds of entertainment (minigolf, saloon, beach for swimming, ect) and other essential facilities (plumbing system, cold storage, countless different restaurants, places like the peppibot factory that can supply jobs, housing, even a fucking GRAVEYARD) are strewn throughout the entire tower. Maybe the first floor with all the dungeon levels is some sort of jail area, a punishment zone for misbehaving residents. It has just about everything needed for people to call this place home, and we even SEE the bosses actively living here. The bosses don't just wait in their arenas, we see them sulk off to other parts of the tower after we defeat them. They don't want to leave until they're forced to by the tower's collapse. It's like some massive cruiseship.

POINT THREE: The events of the game are being recorded and broadcast as entertainment. The television in the corner that displays peppino at all times is shown in numerous other areas: the residents of the pig city are seen watching it, the televisions are used in pizzahead's one attack, the resume button in the pause menu is a TV with a play symbol on it.. Hell, even the Noise has an extra camera crew for a portion of his own bossfight, though that could be partially unrelated as the Noise seems to have a media presence completely separate from the tower. A TON of signs point to Peppino's escapades being recorded, but the purpose of this is completely up in the air- it could be televized as a believed-to-be-fictional series to the outside world, it could be a security system monitoring Peppino, hell, it could even just be for Pizzahead's personal entertainment.

POINT FOUR: This is NOT Pizzahead's first attempt at a business venture. Don't Make a Sound's background elements point to the idea that this was Pizzahead's first ever restaurant, which went bankrupt for reasons that aren't ever insinuated (probably the same problems that plague the rest of the tower: poor quality, poor safety measures, poor matinence and upkeep). This gives Pizzahead the motive of being jealous of Peppino's success (despite Peppino himself being in serious debt, although his restaurant IS still standing.. I guess debt like that wouldn't be something Pizzahead would be aware of), wanting to destroy him for being more successful. This jealousy also gives an explanation to why things like the cloning section in WAR and Peppibot Factory would exist in this supposed utopia Pizzahead attempted to create; Pizzahead wanted to replicate the success of Peppino somehow, but always failed. This gives credit to the next point.

POINT FIVE: The story of Pizza Tower contains a moral pertaining to quality over quantity. Pizzahead most certainly has or had a fuckton of money and connections in order to build this massive tower AFTER going bankrupt on his own business, marking him as some sort of corporate conglomerate millionaire figure comparable to someone like Ronald McDonald. Despite all of the money thrown at the Tower, it's all brought crumbling down by a single man and his blazing desire to keep his proper, authentic, mom-and-pop pizza business afloat. Craftsmanship and dedication to what you create will always outshine heartless corporate slop. And then there's the more obvious moral of don't push people's limits and/or don't fuck with Italians (which is probably the moral the devs would adhere to more since they don't really take the lore seriously like my autistic ass).

Do I have a way to wrap this up? No. Did any of this make sense? Probably not. Whatever. Thanks for reading another massive wall of text from Panurei "Autism" Derogatory.

[coelpts]

Hello everyone, I have a Hypnospace Theory (but as far as I'm concerned it's a Hypnospace Fact) about Coolfest '99. I'm sure everyone else has already come to the same conclusion, but I haven't actually seen anyone talk about it so I'm putting my thoughts here.

Spoilers for Hypnospace Outlaw! Please do not read this until you've finished up the story for the game!

Here's my thesis: FRE3ZER sabotaged Coolfest '99.

Okay let me back up. Obviously FRE3ZER couldn't mess up all of Coolfest. The unfortunate tragedy of the Chowdercopter was not his fault, nor was the colossal mismanagement of the entire event from Gray's Peak, but the lip syncing was intentional. FRE3ZER wanted to drive the final nail into Coolpunk's coffin.

Why do I say this? Let's lay out the facts as they're initially presented.

During Coolfest, FRE3ZER- also known as Jan Wolf- was seen lip syncing to the song 'Icy Girl' on stage. After the convention, Jan clarified that this was a mistake; he had been singing along with the song, but he accidentally queued up a work-print of the song that had extra lyrics. This excuse is recognized as being weak at best, and shortly after he announces a hiatus from songwriting and performing. From this point, Coolpunk as a movement completely implodes, and by Y2K MerchantSoft intends to transform the Coolpunk Paradise into an all-purpose music Zone called The Venue.

However, missing from this summary is the real identity of FRE3ZER. This fact will likely missed on first-time playthroughs; it's found in chapter one through the incomplete and mostly inaccessible Fungus Scene about page. The pioneer of Fungus Scene, FatherFungus, known for making music under the pseudonym Basidia, is the true FRE3ZER- Ray Dolan. Ray reportedly has terrible stage fright and so signed on with Esotonic Records as a songwriter and producer. Jan Wolf hired as a 'face' to play Ray's music onstage. This fact is removed before the Cavern becomes publicly available, citing a contractual prohibition against divulging the info.

How can we tell this is the truth? FatherFungus has unlisted page in Coolpunk Paradise dated November 20th of 1998, the generally agreed date that the defining song 'Colder Than The Rest' was released, with the song playing and downloadable for free. Said page is nearly completely taken down by Esotonic by the second chapter, the title song being replaced with the Basidia track 'Ghost of the Grotto'.

Additionally, although the singers voice in 'Colder Than The Rest' is significantly distorted, there's no denying that it sounds very similar to the voice in Basidia's song 'Ghost of the Grotto'. Even more, 'Ghost of the Grotto' is a song about a creative struggling with the idea of being unseen and unheard while someone else plays their music.

The connection isn't exactly subtle.

Okay, so now the situation is thus: Ray Dolan, aka FRE3ZER, signed a deal with Esotonic Records and hired front man Jan Wolf to perform his music live. Jan's first performance was at Coolfest '99, where the lip sync incident tanked FRE3ZER's reputation and crashed Coolpunk square into the ground.

But we can go deeper.

There's another character at play here- COOLPUNK_IS_DEAD. This user made a page as an ode to Coolpunk and its demise sometime after Coolfest and it's deleted in December. It notes that Coolpunk has fallen, killed by corporations that were exploiting it. To quote, 'They've identified what makes us US and are selling it back to us'. This user is distributing the lip syncing video and the immediate aftermath, and advises that people turn away from this co-opted movement to find their own freedom.

COOLPUNK_IS_DEAD is FatherFungus, Ray Dolan. Aside from the fact that this page directly links to Fungus Scene, these two users share the same headband ID: 04886A. COOLPUNK_IS_DEAD is therefore a sock puppet, made by Ray Dolan to widely distribute the video of Jan Wolf failing his performance.

Now we circle back to Coolfest, and the excuse provided by Jan: he mistakenly queued up a different version of the song with more lyrics. This excuse was already flimsy; the version of 'Icy Girl' that was distributed across Hypnospace was the same one that played during Coolfest, so the idea that FRE3ZER had intended to play a different version is about as strong as wet tissues. And now that we know that Jan isn't FRE3ZER, this series of events is called into question even further. This isn't his music. Did he even organize the set list to begin with? Does he actually know the FRE3ZER discography? Did he know what he was playing at all?

This line of questioning lead me to two answers. Option one: Jan Wolf is in on this. He's a friend of Ray's and the two of them collaborated to cause the failure of FRE3ZER live. Option two: Ray intentionally sent Jan the incorrect copies of the song to practice, and the live set list was designed to throw him off guard and under the bus.

Personally, I believe option two. Why? The answer lies with the final piece of this puzzle: FR33ZIECHIKA. This account belongs to one Amanda Price, and she's an astroturf account. The tells are obvious; she links to Gray's Peak with sponsored soda images all over her page, her style of writing is bizarrely corporate and sterile, and her review of Coolfest is out of touch with reality. It mentions none of the horror and drama of the real event, refusing to comment on the tragedy of the Chowdercopter and making reference to an extended set list from FRE3ZER when he only performed one song before being booed off the stage. But if that wasn't enough, the proof is once again in the headband IDs. Hers is 04902A, and she shares it with the official FRE3ZER account.

Her account is quietly deleted sometime in December.

This all leads to my final conclusion. FRE3ZER sabotaged Coolfest '99 to kill Coolpunk dead. After seeing what Gray's Peak were doing with the movement he signed a deal with Esotonic and let them hire Jan Wolf as his public face, only to send him a live set that exposed him as a fraud. He took the evidence and distributed it across Hypnospace, letting his former artist brand and hired face take the fall. From the ashes of his act he developed Fungus Scene, a musical movement that truly embodied his ideals- no brand sponsorships, no big names, just the unbridled creativity that the darkness of the caverns provide.

And, I mean. I can't say it didn't work, but I can't help but mourn. What Coolpunk was, how it was eaten alive, and the kids and young adults that just wanted to belong somewhere.