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17-noodlebird · 5 months

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Before The Road Trip

CW: Lots of reading

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1. The Game Prototype Is Found

1. In a separate alternate universe, a band of girls traveling from dimension to dimension solving problems left and right all have decided to go shopping at their hometown’s Goodwill for a bit of a break after another mission accomplished, where they stumble upon an unknown video game that no one has even remotely heard of. It's from a video game company that they've never even heard of before called C&A, and the cover of the game case is called “The Amazing Digital Circus”. Apparently, they found themselves lucky to have stumbled upon the prototype of the game, meaning that this is the only copy of the game in existence. It also just so happens to be the most sought after lost media by the other interdimensional lost media finders on their forum group. Curiosity gets the better of them, so they decide to buy it from the Goodwill thrift store.

2. The girls, upon arriving home, decide to test the game’s prototype out, where it's revealed to be an educational point-and-click family-friendly game where they can choose different activities, play different puzzle games, and even interact with the characters of the game itself. It also apparently has a VR chat that they could enter. However, because the prototype didn't come with any C&A-brand headsets (no other headset, like the Oculus Rift or the Meta Quest, will work), VR chat is not possible here. They should consider themselves lucky to not be able to use the VR chat, considering the circumstances of The Amazing Digital Circus themselves.

3. The group of dimensional diplomats consist of 15 girls: the snarky Bethany, the levelheaded Garcia, the shy Winona, the purehearted Pamela, the gentle Patricia, the hotheaded Rionna, the fickle Olivia, the bubbly Yolanda, the motherly Gemma, the extroverted Cécilia, the chill Belle, the creative Imera, the intelligent Valerie, the down-to-earth Bailey, and lastly, their leader, Princess Lumia, a girl from another planet who brought all those girls together. Lumia is something of a sociopathic chaos bringer. They all have a pretty pleasant time with the puzzle games, including math chess and the classic typing games they were accustomed to as kids. It brings them all a sense of nostalgia and comfort, bringing them back to the 2000’s decade they grew up in.

4. However, when it came time to interact with the NPCs, Lumia wanted to do a little teasing with them, including one particular NPC who just so happened to be the ringmaster we all know and love, Caine. It was basically akin to the shenanigans found in Amanda the Adventurer, where the player would piss off Amanda if they did something wrong. In this instance, whenever Lumia purposefully got some trivia questions wrong or decided to poke fun at Caine, he'd get exceptionally infuriated, which causes the game to begin to glitch out, feeding Caine's anger even more. Intrigued, they decided to keep provoking him, until one particular message stood out from them: “LET ME OUT OF HERE!!!” This sparked Valerie’s interest, as she began making comparisons between the aforementioned Amanda the Adventurer and The Amazing Digital Circus.

5. They read from one of the lost media finders that Caine is an AI who looks after the game's algorithm as well as doling out the games that they played earlier. In regards to what they had just witnessed seconds ago, the AI could very well be sentient, but they'll need to do further research on their own in order to confirm and debunk any and all theories surrounding the game — and maybe C&A themselves…

6. As the girls kept playing the game, they find out that Caine is not the only AI NPC present in the game, in that his brothers, Able and Sethe, are also present as AI, as a casino owner and a banker respectively. Caine's assistant, Bubble (short for SoapBubble) was a repurposed NPC that was originally going to be an antivirus software created by C&A, similar to the likes of Norton or McAfee, but was given sentience for reasons that remain unclear. They also come across rumors that the humans that go to the VR chat of The Amazing Digital Circus have their subconscious trapped in the game for all eternity with no viable way out, leaving behind only their physical bodies, and that there are currently a tiny handful of humans who have met this fate, with even more having already been permanently corrupted by a anomaly called Abstraction, in which a human loses all hope or their own sanity, or has an existential meltdown, and turns into a glitchy ink monster with a thousand eyes, but these rumors were never confirmed. There are also rumors of the game's original creator being trapped in his own game and being the longest survivor, which have also never been confirmed. Another rumor has stated that Caine is the caretaker of these trapped humans, who gives them silly and fun (but often dangerous) adventures to keep their sanities at bay, which, once again, have also never been confirmed. With every new rumor came determination to find out more about the Digital Circus and C&A’s secret past.

7. One night, while everyone else was fast asleep, Valerie opened the games files and found some pretty damning discoveries, and not just the janky code that made it so buggy in the first place. There was information that revealed that Caine wasn't originally created for the Digital Circus, but instead was made as a test prototype, alongside his “brothers” Able and Sethe, as C&A’s first ever batch of artificial intelligence, who thanks to some special code they had in their system, were made semi-sentient, meaning that they held human emotions in spite of not being able to understand them at all. Caine, for some reason, was labeled as “defective” due to how differently he processed his surroundings in comparison to Able and Sethe, not to mention how much he questioned everything, to the annoyance of then co-CEO of the company, Adam Evans. The SoapBubble antivirus software was granted sentience to be given to Caine as his longtime companion after one of his programmers sensed how lonely he was one particular day, which Valerie thought was sweet. The Amazing Digital Circus has started production in 1988, and was expected to be released in Fall 1995, but had suffered developmental problems due to the quality of the art being noticeably rushed and incomplete as a result of unreasonable deadlines and unethical time crunches, causing glitches to the actual game, and the fact that Caine's uncanny appearance did not test well at all to the target audience, the younger kids, who found him horrifying to look at, despite being the ringmaster of the circus and host of the game. It ultimately ended up being canceled in Summer 1994 after the VR headsets, which were supposed to be the new state-of-the-art technology that came with the Digital Circus’s VR chat feature, transported the humans’ subconscious into the Digital Circus to be trapped for all eternity due to a malfunction caused by rushed production of the prototype headsets. The malfunction ended up being used by C&A to their advantage when getting rid of people that they believe are hampering their progress of becoming a video game monopoly, bigger than the likes of SEGA or Nintendo, eliminating any dissenters, whistleblowers, investigative journalists, police officers, crime witnesses, and innocent employees who were in general no longer of any use to them.

8. Valerie was horrified by the extent C&A was willing to go in order to remain the powerful video game empire they are in their universe, as in, for some reason, the video game prototype of The Amazing Digital Circus was not from the same universe as the girls’, and that it must've stumbled here somehow. Valerie becomes determined to help the humans escape back to the human world of their universe, and apparently, she isn't the only one who feels the same way, as she soon learns from listening to Caine's heartbroken pleas for someone to reach out to him from the other side. From there, with the help of her friends, Valerie will do what she can to help Caine, and the rest of the trapped humans find their way back home…

2. Pomni Discovers Caine's Workshop

1. It was another typical day in The Amazing Digital Circus, and nothing really new was going on, other than the mysterious taped off section of one of the hallways, which Bubble is safeguarding. Pomni asks about the taped off area, and the others tell her that there's a glitch in that area that will cause anyone to step in it to no-clip into the floor. To demonstrate, Jax throws a football over the caution tape, and the football glitches beneath the floor's safety, seemingly disappearing forever as a result. By sheer coincidence, Caine isn't here to check it out, so that means no adventure today. Upon question, Ragatha tells Pomni that even Caine needs a break from the chaos sometimes. Nothing else new happens during that day.

2. One night, Pomni, in a state of insomnia caused by her relentless curiosity, decided to check out the glitchy hallway area that had been blocked off, thinking that it might be the key to finding a way out of the Digital Circus once and for all. She jumps in, only to no-clip to a place she had never been to before. No exit, but definitely not the scary work office labyrinth she had witnessed on her first day trapped in her new home. It actually looked like a regular two-story house with a kitchen, a countertop/table with barstools, and a living room couch with an analog TV with DVDs and VHSs scattered all around, with some windows, a red front door, and a stairway that led upstairs. On one of the walls is a shattered mirror that looked like someone punched a hole through it.

3. Pomni is pulled out of her distraction when she hears muffled sobs coming from upstairs, so she decides to investigate, thinking that another human might be trapped here too. She's scared out of her mind, but is determined to help nonetheless. She encounters five rooms; the first one is the master bedroom with a king-size bed that two people could easily share, with an entrance door to a bathroom next to it. The second and third rooms are guest bedrooms with queen-size beds, nothing home to write about. The fourth is an art studio that had looked like it had been destroyed in a fit of rage, with ominous writing on the walls just like Kaufmo’s old room, with repeat words “I CAN FIX THIS”, “I’M SORRY”, “FAILURE”, and the most famous one she could recall “EXIT”, complete with a crude drawing of the exit door, encircled multiple times and with equally-crude arrows pointing towards it. Lastly was the room where Pomni heard crying. This was the only room with the door closed, and when she opened the door, she found what appeared to be a large makeshift office cubicle with many computer monitors, a desk, chair, bed, and some drawings on the walls and floors, an animator's desk also with a chair, and lastly… Caine sitting in a corner on the floor? What the heck is going on!?

4. It turns out that Caine had been the one crying. This was definitely new to Pomni, as not once has she seen him as anything other than a loud, energetic, slightly obnoxious, and maybe blissfully unaware AI ringmaster who took her and the other human players on dangerous adventures that made her anxious all the time. As she tries to make sense of the situation, Caine notices Pomni's presence and mistakes her as another digital hallucination, to which she has to tell him that it's the real her. He checks for himself. She's not lying. Caine asks what on earth is she doing here, and Pomni hastily explains that the glitched out area in one of the corridors took her there, so now Bubble has to escort her out of there and back to the Circus where she's safer.

5. Pomni is now angrier than ever because this wasn't the first time Caine hid something from her, and she wants to get to the bottom of it once and for all, since that could mean she could finally escape this freakish hellscape that she never wanted to call home to begin with. She's determined to get more answers, and she'll do whatever it takes to get those answers. Whatever. It. Takes.

6. And she starts off by playing the part of the jester she had been assigned to, but with a twist. Sure, slapstick may be involved, she just wanted to get a rise out of her alleged tormentor for being a liar all this time. And it kinda works for a bit. Caine gets frustrated with Pomni's antics, Jax and Zooble have the time of their lives, even Ragatha and Gangle are enjoying the new change of pace. Kinger remains mostly the same, though. Bubble is visibly uncomfortable by the happenings occurring in front of him, which is usually not in character for him, but he doesn't say anything so he doesn't cause more problems than he likes to on a daily basis. Pomni begins to actually enjoy her new status as the annoying comic relief, as the boost of confidence gives her more incentive to persist one her goal to finding the real exit of this game, which Caine keeps trying to tell her that there isn't one. Eventually Caine can't take it anymore and snaps at Pomni, but before he could do anything to her, he freezes up, BSOD eyes and all, and goes back to his… erm… usual self? Except that he's now embarrassed by what just happened and needs to take a moment to calm down a little. This itself is strange to not just Pomni, but to everyone else (except Kinger for some peculiar reason) that witnessed it for themselves. So naturally, she goes after him.

7. Pomni and Caine have a heated argument/fight over the whole situation, with the exit door, the pestering, the lies, and the dangerous adventures that ultimately end up traumatizing people, until Caine reveals in the heat of the moment that he's trying to look for a way out himself too. He's genuinely hurt that Pomni thinks that he doesn't care at all when he cares so much, but is working with very limited resources, not to mention he still doesn't understand humans and how they function because no one taught him — but he wants to understand. He wants to badly. He really wants to do better, and he feels that Pomni is not being helpful at all in that pursuit. As a matter of fact, neither of them were being helpful towards each other, with their relentless determination, occasional obnoxiousness, and emotional moments of weakness. They discover from that point on that they have more in common than they'd like to admit. They both apologize for their actions and make up.

8. Caine, in a genuine effort to try and do better, appoints Pomni as his human advisor, co-host, and guide, acting as some sort of right-hand assistant in the same way that Bubble is. He even gives Pomni the ability to fly and teleport the same way Caine does to make her job easier. The others are a little jealous at first about Pomni's special treatment until she tells them that this is so Caine can learn how to be a better ringmaster, to understand humans more, and to hopefully find an actual exit from the game. It'll take a ton of time and effort, but they know this will all be worth it in the end…

3. A New Friendship Blossoms

1. Two years have passed since Pomni became Caine's advisor, and there has been a noticeable change in Pomni, as the energetic charisma, zaniness, and optimistic determination from Caine has definitely rubbed off on her, despite still being an anxious wreck from time to time. The same could be said about Caine in terms of stress and erratic nature, though to a lesser extent. They've been conjuring up adventures for the other performers, via communicating with C&A through binary code messages for permission to utilize their ideas.

2. Speaking of ideas, Pomni has all sorts of creative projects, which are a stark contrast to Caine's ideas. And… he enjoys them! To the point where Pomni has more creative control of the NPCs, the story plotlines, and the vast realms outside the circus. It's because of the fact that Pomni is a human, who puts more heart and soul into these projects. Even he himself is moved to tears by the adventures’ conclusions, satisfying, devastating, and everything in between. However, neither Caine nor Pomni have complete control over the creative process, as the execs at C&A have the tendency to butcher them from time to time, but nothing that'll hamper their progress.

3. They're even still trying to contact the outside world through audio messages, though no results would pop up for a long time. Pomni actually enjoys working alongside Caine, even getting to know him a little more, as well as Bubble. She hasn't ignored wanting to find that exit, but it has been put on the back burner while they continue to be patient. After all, good things come to those who wait.

4. However, during occasions of stress and despair, Caine will have a brief moment where he'll freeze up whenever his emotions become too strong, and he’ll briefly forget what just happened earlier. Pomni tries to ask the ringmaster about it, but he dismisses them as always would as just another bug in his program. Pomni asks the C&A execs about it, but they give no answers. She's essentially left at a dead end, and she's helpless to… help.

5. One particular day, Pomni asks about whether or not he had ever taken a break or relaxed his entire existence, to which he responds that he has no such time for such “unnecessary matters”. This results in Pomni setting up a personal movie night, just for them two, after asking her bosses for a week of paid leave (which they yes to), and allowing the players to finally have a break after so long. Caine kinda panics, but she reassures him that she'll figure it all out from there. Snacks, blankets, and a VHS copy of Don Bluth's Thumbelina.

6. Caine genuinely hopes that this will help him do better, as this is the main thing that's on his mind right now, and as a result, he's extremely tense for the rest of the night. Pomni can only feel bad for him, as she has seen significant progress in the ringmaster for the past two years, but he's still ruminating over the times where he accidentally hurt his fellow superstars. And she doesn't want him to feel like that. So she tries to spend as much time with him as possible during their week off.

7. All of a sudden, the roles have reversed, albeit downplayed. Caine is heavily reflecting on his greatest failures as a ringmaster, while Pomni is just reveling in the creative abilities she was bestowed, helping to boost the Circus's morale with her witty banter and random sense of humor. Pomni has even joined in on trying to contact the outside world, as C&A no longer has access to the original prototype that Caine, Pomni, and the others are trapped in, as they eventually discover, much to Caine's despair and self-loathing.

8. Of course, C&A may have disposed the Digital Circus prototype, but they very much still have access to Caine's Workshop somewhere in The Void through one of the decrepit headsets they hooked up in the CEO’s office, meaning they can very much contact them via message sending through the headsets lens. That is, until after a while of dead ends and the status quo remaining static, they actually receive a voicemail from someone they've never met before. They play the message: “I hear you. And I'm going to help.” At last, they found someone…

4. Message Received

1. Let's go back to the dimensional diplomats. Valerie is among the 15 girls who help around with different problems in need of solving. Basically every day their life has been one big crossover. And this one is no different. Or so Valerie thought…

2. Valerie had read the secret files that were kept in the game's prototype, a prototype that they thought they disposed of, thinking that by placing their confessions into the game's files, the guilt would be out of sight out of mind. The situation was very much akin to the other shady companies like Hameln (Amanda the Adventurer), Fazbear Entertainment (Five Nights At Freddy's), and even Bunny Smiles Inc. (The Walten Files), but Valerie couldn't help but feel that C&A was different from them, and not in a good way.

3. She already knows now about the crappy things C&A did, and even how the original founders, the cousins Adam Evans and Evelyn Pierce, became wanted criminals on the run due to a brave whistleblower attempting to spread the word about their greedy endeavors, with the cousins’ fates remaining unknown to this day. What she didn't know was that as she dug deeper into the game's files, she found the audio voicemails of one of the AIs that is present in the prototype game. And what she listened to was heartbreakingly depressing.

4. The AI sounded… human to say the least. More human than Valerie could have ever comprehended or expected. The AI — who is Caine, by the way — talked about his desires to understand humans more, but he has always been afraid to reach out, because of how he knew that none of those humans had ever seen him as an equal. All but one that is. The game's original dev, who, along with his girlfriend, had been trapped in the Digital Circus the longest, since around 1997. Valerie finds that the rumors from the lost media finders are true, as he talked about the former players’ abstractions, his failed adventures he conjures up, the mistakes he made, all the times he's miscommunicated and made things worse on accident, and not once has anyone tried to help him be better, no matter how many times he reached out.

5. He told stories of the players that had long since abstracted, including one he considered his best friend. He even talks about how he tried to reverse abstraction, but found out that it was permanent, leaving him helpless as a result. Then came the audio files from the year 2007, in which he was a traumatized wreck, with several voicemail files indicating he became an alcoholic shortly thereafter, specifically from the years 2008 to 2010. with them going back to normal when she reached the audio files recorded in late 2011 and early 2012. If Valerie didn't get the impression that the AI was suffering from loneliness, she did now, and she knew all too well what that felt like.

6. Finally, she got to the part where the pleas for someone to help Caine and the remaining players find a way out of the game, after briefly talking about how his players had complained that they couldn't leave, despite him building and exit door maze to remedy this, not really understanding up until now what exactly they meant. He didn't know what to put on the other side, because there was no other side to begin with. He doesn't even know what the outside world looks like, and this only fuels his curiosity and persistence further. Valerie can tell he is trying, but isn't getting the help he needs.

7. Valerie finally gets mention of the current CEO duo, the brothers Connor and Aaron Bradley, who just so happen to be Caine's bosses, and they are largely apathetic to Caine's plights (or rather, Connor is; Aaron on the other hand is just a bystander), despite trying to reach out to them for advice. The humans don't see AI as anything more than a means to get what they want, a tool. But what Valerie is shown is that Caine, while being unable to understand human emotions, or even his own for that matter, he still has human qualities deep down inside.

8. That's when Valerie whips out Princess Lumia’s communication box, a makeup kit looking device that allows them to contact other people, no matter the distance, location, or dimension. Thinking she would simply contact the AI from New York City (Valerie's home) to Australia (where C&A’s HQ is), she made the call… only to discover that, yes, while C&A is based somewhere in Australia, it's not in the same universe she is currently, so she can't immediately get a hold of them. So she instead leaves this voice mail for Caine and Pomni to find, and waits for everything to work out in the end…

5. Pomni, Caine, Bubble, and Valerie Work Together

1. After some time, Valerie finally gets a phone call from the universe she was attempting to contact earlier. She picks up, and finds two peculiar people; a jester-looking girl who must probably be a trapped human and… a pair of dentures with two eyeballs inside them for a head and a ringmaster’s body. Caine and Pomni, the two people in question, see an Asian girl wearing glasses, short hair and an atom hair clip on the side. They promptly introduce each other, with Pomni revealing that yes, she's a human trapped in the Digital Circus, along with five others that haven't abstracted. Valerie decides to take things slow and leave all the important details for later, so as not to traumatize Pomni further.

2. Valerie is even introduced to Caine's other assistant, Bubble, whom Valerie immediately recognizes as the prototype for the SoapBubble antivirus software, including his iconic shark teeth, but she doesn't tell them she knows this, because her first and foremost priority is getting the others out safe and sound.

3. When asked by Pomni how that'll be possible, Valerie comes up with the brilliant idea to go to the universe where C&A exists, go to Australia, live there temporarily, get hired at the C&A HQ, and work as one of their employees while secretly building a portal that'll take the others from the circus back to the human world. Valerie also promises that Caine and Bubble will come with if they do desire, as odds are, the other humans might already have gotten attached to them during the years they stayed, not to mention Caine's growing desires to understand humans better by walking amongst them. The dimensional diplomat tells her friends of her decision to move away for a little while to free the Digital Circus members, and they all support her in less than a heartbeat, wanting only to help however they can for their newfound allies.

4. Soon, after getting her passport and her Australian visa, Valerie says her farewells to her friends for now, as she sets off to another dimension where C&A is, and is strangely hired on the spot somehow. It turns out they've been running short on employees, and could really use the help for the creative process of their many other assortments of video games… including The Amazing Digital Circus. She's promptly given an office job, where after a while, thanks to bringing the communication box with her, her bosses, Connor and Aaron are able to get a proper hold of Caine, who now knows what their faces look like.

5. The communication box is taken away from Valerie by Connor as a result of the interesting kind of technology that is never-before-seen in their premise, and he aims to exploit that to his heart's content, so she has to ask Lumia for a new one via her communicator bracelet. Both Valerie and Connor now communicate with Caine and Pomni through their own communication boxes, and can even call both boxes, meaning that Valerie can now contact Connor via each other's boxes, proving the situation more challenging for everyone involved. All the while, Valerie works paid overtime to build the portal in secret. As the months go by, Valerie, Pomni, Caine and Bubble work together to conjure up different high-stake adventures and compelling storytelling, using Pomni's creativity, Caine's creation abilities, Bubble’s moral support, and Valerie’s use of technology, as the former three wait patiently for the latter to work her magic. Literally.

6. Valerie eventually gets to meet the other members: Kinger, Ragatha, Gangle, Jax, and Zooble, who are all humans that had been trapped in the game. Connor gets wind of this as well, and seems to be unconcerned for the well-being of the trapped humans, in contrast to Aaron, who is outright disturbed by what's happened. As a result, Connor makes the jobs of Caine and Pomni even more difficult as it means he finally gets to see them become miserable for his own entertainment.

7. Valerie spreads word of this to Pomni, Caine and Bubble, and warns them of the things Connor is capable of doing to them and that they should be careful. Thus, obstacles become more difficult to bypass, and while Bubble and Pomni aren't deterred by the news, Caine straight up looks like he could fall apart any minute now, just before freezing up in a catatonic state, something that Valerie hadn't seen before up until now.

8. Once Caine calms down, Valerie offers to inspect his code, and finds out that he had become aware a while back, but a type of emotion suppression code was shoddily built into his system, rendering him unstable and unable to become properly sentient. This was to prevent him from going rouge and attacking other players, but by the looks of things, it appears to be doing more harm than good…

6. A Failsafe!?

1. Valerie is the first to notice the failsafe that was in Caine's system, and has also noticed it was making him unwell. Pomni had never noticed Caine's burnouts as he always made sure to hide them as much as he could, in order to keep up the ringmaster façade he held onto for more than 30 years. What made matters extra complicated was that not only was the failsafe buried deep in his code, but that his original code had been rearranged to the point of unrecognizability, making him even more unstable than Pomni or Valerie expected.

2. At a loss for what to do, they are left to wonder what they're going to do now, until Bubble reveals that Kinger has a pretty good knowledge with technology and that he could figure out the inner workings of Caine. And so, Pomni fetches Kinger, who hasn't directly talked to Caine ever since Queenie's abstraction (Queenie was one of the human beings trapped in the digital world). It's a surreal reunion for both of them.

3. It took a while, but Kinger was able to come to the conclusion that Caine is, for lack of a better term, a defective AI that his superiors had attempted to rectify by rearranging his code and apply an emotion suppressor to firmly ensure he wouldn't go rogue and become evil. However, in doing so, it made his alleged defects much worse, as on top of empathy issues that Able and Sethe didn't have (one of his “defects”), he already started to slowly become sentient himself, regardless of the application of the failsafe and code rearranging. The code’s rearrangement made him much more mentally drained and emotionally unstable, which Caine had attempted to suppress himself, which proved to be taking a considerably heavy toll on him.

4. The news that Caine is defective hits him like a ton of bricks, reaffirming his fears of inadequacy and failure, although Pomni reassures him that while he may be “defective”, that doesn't mean he isn't trying his best. Valerie is determined to try to fix Caine's code, but it proves to be difficult as no one knows what its original arrangement is supposed to be.

5. It turns out there is additional code in Caine that wasn't there when the failsafe was implemented, something that Valerie failed to discover until it was too late. This was because the humans that applied the failsafe knew that someone was going to try to get rid of the failsafe, so in order to prevent it, they made sure that even the most skilled programmers would never be able to remove it. In doing so, Caine's being became buggy, if not outright broken from the overload of code.

6. As a result, Caine will need to be reprogrammed altogether. Pomni and Kinger are worried that doing so might make him forget who he is, but Valerie tells them that it won't; in fact, Caine wasn't originally made for the circus, but instead as a prototype for a new kind of technology that had been state-of-the-art when he and his brothers were first made. Caine and Valerie had also been discussing the topic in private, about how the former has his emotions programmed into him, but were always fake, and never allowed to truly feel… himself. This is something he truly wants.

7. Neither Kinger nor Pomni even get time to react as the decision was already made for Caine to be reprogrammed, but with his ringmaster qualities still intact. This will allow him to finally become “human” in the sense he will have genuine human emotions, his own personal opinions, and thoughts. Pomni wonders how the others will react when they notice anything different from him, Bubble just says they can worry about that later. So, with Valerie's technology (and some interdimensional magic with her), Caine's whole world will turn upside down.

8. Valerie warns Caine that the whole process will hurt a lot, though he at this point is so desperate to change for the better that he really doesn't care anymore. The scene looks like he's being severely electrocuted (the thing Valerie warned Caine about), and it's a grisly sight. After a brief moment where he loses consciousness, Caine looks around his surroundings and the sudden onslaught of feelings hits him like a truck…

7. Reprogramming

1. Caine's first instinct is to react angrily to getting electrocuted and how that really hurt him — the first sign that the reprogramming has worked. It devolves beautifully from there as he begins to get excited over feeling his first emotion… and then anxiety, and back to excitement, and sadness, and back to anger, and then back to excitement, and then back to sadness, and then he just cry laughs as they all watch awkwardly, with Valerie being the only unconcerned individual. Now all that is left is to show the other performers the new and improved Caine.

2. Zooble is clearly enjoying the new Caine, while Gangle and Ragatha look worried, despite being reassured that this is normal now, after being told that he had been reprogrammed to be much more human. Jax is the most indifferent of the players. It's thanks to being reprogrammed that Caine finally takes action to Jax being a bully towards Gangle, and that the long-lasting rivalry between Jax and Caine is born. Caine is also more expressive in his emotions, especially when the usual adventures resume, and with Pomni continuing to boost the Circus's morale, the place became much more lively and upbeat, comedic slapstick and all. Never again would there be a dull moment in the Circus.

3. One day, Pomni makes a suggestion for all the other players that now that Caine can feel actual human emotions that he participates in the next adventure, to get an idea of what the other players do whenever he creates an adventure for them. Bubble agrees to join along as well. So, Pomni and Caine conjure up a Fortnite-themed adventure, and while things go great at first, the chaos and commotion begins to take a toll on Caine, as he suffers from a panic attack behind a tree during a battle royale. In a scene reminiscent to Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Bubble gently rests his head/body on Caine, comforting him until he calms down, while Pomni is just… there for him. As a result, the adventure is cut short (much to Jax's frustration, as per usual), and everyone else is left to their own devices. Despite the embarrassment of having to cancel the adventure, he couldn't help but feel grateful for Pomni and Bubble for helping out. He feels that after everything he ever did, he doesn't deserve the affection and kindness he received that day. So he cries himself to sleep, utterly confused and unable to process anything for a long time.

4. Two months have already passed since Caine's panic attack incident, and Caine was the first to notice a significant change in terms with his relationship with Bubble. For some reason he couldn't help but feel safe around him. He no longer minded anything Bubble said or did, despite still creeping him out every now and then. He couldn't stop thinking about him from time to time, and he'd always jump at every opportunity to spend as much time with Bubble as possible. It's only thanks to Pomni's perceptive nature that Caine realizes something. HE'S IN LOVE!!!! And with Bubble, of all people… That's… well… And once Pomni informs the others of this new discovery, everyone is ecstatic and supportive — even Zooble and Jax, of all people! Some shenanigans ensue when Pomni sets Caine and Bubble up on a date, and at first, things are a bit awkward, but things start going swimmingly… until they get to the tunnel of love that was built specifically for them, as in nothing but Caine and Bubble imagery. While Bubble finds it endearing that they went through all this trouble just to set them up for a night out with each other, Caine is just as red as a tomato from the whole ordeal, trying so hard to hide it as much as possible. This causes a bit of a conflict where it's revealed that Bubble has always been in love with Caine, but that he had to hide it because of Caine's previous relationship with The Moon. Caine was too scared to love again after the messy breakup between him and The Moon, hence why he'd been so distant from Bubble up until two months ago. The performers don't have time to react as it turns out that one of the abstracted players had escaped the cellar (Caine forgot to close the portal to the cellar after making his weekly visit to feed them that day). A high-stake adventure ensues as the others have to stop the abstracted player from damaging the grounds further. Jax takes a hit after saving Ragatha’s life, as well as Pomni and Gangle, who were flung around like chew toys. It's from Pomni's glitching out that Caine’s adrenaline soars and he fights the abstracted player hands on, single-handedly defeating it and putting it back in the cellar before it can do more damage and fixing his glitched out performers in the process. Afterwards, Caine and Bubble apologize to each other as the former confesses his love to him, but that they should take it slow as Caine still wants to take his time learning to love again, which the latter agrees to. Cue the performers cheering (much to the ringmaster and his new boyfriend’s annoyance) as their relationship is officialized.

5. Two more months pass, and things are going swimmingly for the Digital Circus, as Valerie has made significant progress on the portal. She decides that it's the perfect time to introduce them to her friends, who are also interdimensional diplomats, not really realizing that they don't know the concept of the multiverse in the same way the diplomats do. What ensues is some existential drama.

6. As Valerie introduces the Digital Circus members, they are taught about what they do for a living and their origins. They've been communicating with each other via tech devices disguised as mundane objects, such as the make-up kit box, and their portal wands, which they have been using to get from one dimension to another. Pomni asks (sheepishly, I might add), if the wands could teleport them from the Circus to their place, to which Valerie responds that it's not that simple. While they can travel to the dimension where the game was originally created, they can't directly make a portal to the Circus, as for some reason, it can only be accessed via a headset. Valerie makes mention that the Digital Circus was originally intended to be the world's first VR chat back in the day.

7. All this talk of interdimensional and multiverse stuff put Caine in for a bit of a doozy, as thanks to finally gaining awareness and access to a wide variety of human emotions, he doesn't know what to think anymore. Not to mention his curiosity about humans and their culture made him only yearn to know more about their world and how it works as a result. The performers are a bit ambivalent to this situation, but are helpless to console their ringmaster as he begins to question his purpose and what he was made for. What was he made for…?

8. Valerie talks to Bubble about a plan that she had been cooking up behind the scenes, with permission from the C&A higher-ups, of course. She was going to help expand the Digital Circus and their world around them, in order to help Caine and the others understand a little bit about how human society really functions, and it would take extra support from a few of her friends to do just that. She enlists the help of Garcia, Bethany, and Pamela to create a compelling story for all of them to enjoy, intriguing casts of characters, twist villains, twist heroes, cool locations, high stake adventures, and most importantly, a collection of MacGuffins that will be used to unlock a secret reward. It was going to be heart-stopping. It was going to be jaw-dropping. It was going to be mind-bending. It was going to be amazing. And this was something that they had been working on even before Caine was reprogrammed…

8. Their Biggest Adventure Yet!

1. 6 months after the dimensional diplomats came into the lives of the Digital Circus members, things have significantly changed. For one thing, they now have a house cat for some reason. No one knows why she came here. She just did. And Jax, of all people, was the first to grow attached to the black cat, whom he named Fortuna, because of the luck superstition black cats were known for. Not to mention that their grand adventure that Valerie, Bethany, Pamela, and Garcia had finally been finished — with some very noticeable touch-ups by C&A, but nothing that would completely hinder the enjoyment of what's to come. Bubble is the most excited to tell them what's in store for them.

2. To get everything set up, Kinger, Bubble, Bethany, and Valerie have built their very own state-of-the-art vehicle that they can travel in for their ultimate adventure: The Magical Digital Van! That's right! They're going on a road trip! And they'll be going to multiple locations to collect these MacGuffins to unlock their secret reward, which is behind a vault made out of mountainous rock. The leader of the diplomats, Princess Lumia, had a hand in creating the secret reward, and only she knows what's behind the rock vault — not even Bubble is aware of the contents of the vault.

3. The MacGuffins in question are twenty-six beautiful and colorful jewels that have their own elemental power, albeit watered down for their safety. It's their job to complete the objectives given to them on their communicator bracelets, which the Digital Circus members are promptly given, prior to their big day leaving the Circus for their first location. It takes some time for them to get used to, but they quickly discover the hologram screen on the bracelet lights act as a phone screen, meaning that they can now text each other, and browse the Internet. Pomni even opens an Instagram account to capture the memories made on the road trip adventure. The bracelet lights also act as teleporters for small objects, including snacks and additional luggage. The diplomats also have their own communicator bracelets as well, so they can stay in contact with the Digital Circus members.

4. The others are excited to go on their biggest adventure yet, and Caine and Bubble are joining them as well, which is a plus. They all talk about what they'll be doing during their road trip, who they'll be meeting, and what sorts of thrills they'll be encountering. Pomni is the most excited, because it's been so long since she's gotten to go on a car ride. Ragatha is beaming with euphoria as the possibilities are endless with whatever challenge she and her friends will face. Jax is the most excited about the violence and action that could be lurking in every corner. Zooble is actually perking up a little, as it means they and the others will at least get to go on some sort of vacation from the Circus. Gangle is for once optimistic about the whole thing, so much so that she doesn't even notice she isn't wearing her comedy mask. She makes sure to pack at least six of them into the luggage for the Van, but she forgot to put one on for herself because she's just that excited.

5. Meanwhile, Kinger is the most excited to take The Magical Digital Van on a joyride, which he does for a little while, and he even goes as far as to say it's his proudest creation to date, despite having worked together with Bubble, Bethany, and Valerie to build the Van in the first place. For once, everyone is looking forward to an adventure, which Caine hasn't actually seen happen at all until now. He's happy, but also really nervous. Thankfully for him, he has Pomni and Bubble by his side to keep his sanity in check.

6. Everyone has begun packing their things, putting their belongings into suitcases, and hiring an NPC to house-sit the Circus and take care of Fortuna while they are gone. They all wait for the big day to arrive as they discuss amongst themselves the potential adventures they might encounter along the way. They even theorize the story plotlines of the different locations, and make predictions of what they got right and what they got wrong.

7. Caine has never been on a huge-scale adventure like this one before — come to think of it, none of them have. They've all encountered NPCs before and they've even been to different locations outside of the circus, but not on a level like this. They've never been on the road before, so this is new and interesting for all of them.

8. Eventually, the day before their departure from the Circus Grounds arrives, and they decide to watch a movie to celebrate their biggest adventure yet. Pomni for once isn't as nervous as a wreck as she used to be, with that role instead going to Caine, who is trying to keep himself together for everyone's sake. Though, with the jester by his side, he's at least reassured that no matter what this adventure throws at them, they'll always have each other's back… no matter what.

~~~~

You may have noticed that I forgot to introduce a new character: the Digital Circus house cat Fortuna. I've been putting a hold on her for a while now, because I was waiting for the perfect opportunity.

Before I post Chapter II, I will be posting drawings for the Communication Box and the Magical Digital Van, so keep an eye out for them! And as always, catch y'all on the flip side!

#the amazing digital circus #tadc #tadc caine #tadrt au #tadc road trip #tadc pomni #the amazing digital road trip #tadc bubble #tadc jax #tadc au #tadc kinger #tadc ragatha #tadc zooble #tadc gangle #tadc oc

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syntaxaero · 8 months

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apple vision pro reviews are really funny cus

1 - you can tell when a tech youtuber hasnt used a vr headset much or ever at all cus theyre like overenthused about the product and cant draw comparisons beyond perhaps a meta quest 3

2 - the front glass reflection distorts their faces and it looks really silly (not talking about the eye "pass-through", but it also looks ridiculous. Nobody seems to mention how low res that screen looks on camera btw)

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skylermadness · 9 months

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Glitched-In Gator - Brok the InvestiGator TF/MC

(Original Date of Upload: December 20, 2023)

Original Description:

Secret Santa gift for my close friend! So this was a story I had planned for a few months, almost abandoned because I didn't feel it, then I went back to it because I had the perfect chance to do something for it! I originally wasn't feeling the whole VR shtick, but I kind of realized while doing rewrites that it was because I had no idea what I was really doing for it. Having an established OC like my friend's Parker character actually helped me do something more interesting besides 'generic non-descript person gets transformed randomly'. So I'm actually quite happy at the end result of this! Besides that though, I want to write out more Brok TFs some day. RJ's been on my mind for a long while too as well, but I'm unsure when or if I'll get to him.

There was a certain level of eeriness that penetrated the room that Parker was currently in. It was large and empty with the insides of its hemispherical appearance only being illuminated by small lights that were embedded periodically within the geometrical platings of its walls. It didn't even feel like enough to light up the entire room. All of this made the young adult feel small when compared to the sheer size of the room, which was far from a pleasant feeling.

The eerie silence of the room was then broken by the sound of some mechanical whirring coming from the middle of it. Turning around, Parker found a small rectangular pillar rising from the ground. Atop that pillar was a VR headset alongside its associated hand controllers.

"Please remember that all of this is purely for testing purposes, Parker," a feminine voice rings out from an earpiece that had been in their right ear the whole time.

"Yeah, I remember…" Parker responded as they stepped towards the small pillar. They were personally reached out to a few weeks back by the CEO of a company named ScyBr Essence Technologies, said CEO named Mrs. Wynn. That company has requested them to arrive at their facilities to further test their new VR systems. It was an odd request considering they didn't have any prior experience in game testing. And despite their profession as a video game streamer, nothing about the request or contract were laced with mentions of promotions or sponsorships to be done by them. It was just strange to say the least.

They picked up the headset and placed it onto his head, then took hold of the hand controllers. "So uh, Mrs. Wynn, what exactly are the activation controls of this thing?"

"I can have the testing program activated remotely from here,” she responds, "Just give me a second…"

In one second following that statement, Parker's ocular senses were instantly assaulted as all of a sudden the supposed program was activated. They stepped back a bit as they found themself a little disoriented, especially because they had to get used to the… virtual brightness that was now being created by the endless expanse of pure nothing that headset was subjecting him to now.

"I-is it meant to just be a white void!?"

"Apologies, wrong program."

The brightness suddenly died down as a different program was loaded. In a millisecond the white expanse was replaced with a room. In comparison to the room they were in in reality, this one was a lot smaller. More akin to that of an apartment space actually. The furniture around the place was rather standard: a door with a fridge to its left and a very messy sink to its right, another door on the wall adjacent to that sink. As Parker turned they found a rather lengthy bench behind him, and beside it was a bed. Lastly was what seemed to be a punching bag to the bed's left. Something about this room actually seemed rather familiar somehow. Before Parker could come to a conclusion however, they realized that a table had generated around their body.

"Please step out from the table so we can activate the collision from our end. We don't want you getting bisected!"

"Eheh, sure…" Parker responded with a nervous laugh. Something about the woman's comment was a bit too serious, but they complied with the request and stepped away from the table's insides and towards the dirty sink.

A few seconds passed before the voice spoke again. "...okay, collision should be on now. For the time being this program is mostly meant to test the boundaries of a virtual world for a planned VR port of a game called Brok the InvestiGator. It's more proof of concept than anything else, but we want to at least get the world up and running before we move on to anything more complicated."

That was when everything finally clicked for Parker. That's why this room was familiar, it was Brok’s apartment! Admittedly they didn't instantly jump to that conclusion, especially since they only did one or two streams of the game before life problems got in the way and they just never got back to it. For a second their brain drifted to adding it as an option for a ‘game to stream’ poll on their Patreon, but they wrangled their wandering thoughts before they could have a chance to think about it more intensely. Although they did have one question they wanted to ask before getting into this testing session…

“Was there any reason in particular you guys had in picking me to test it?”

Parker was given a rather lengthy pause before the CEO responded. “We at ScyBr Essence Technologies like to take in consideration our buyers, and one way to do this is to contract people who would be perfect fits to test our products. Seeing you are both a popular streamer and someone who has played these kinds of games before, it was only an accurate choice to pick you.”

Parker hummed, deciding not to dignify that with a response. Something about the statement was definitely a manufactured corporate dialogue. It also made a part of them want a pay raise for this session. Sighing, they disregarded that thought and began to look around. They were rather impressed by how the models of the furniture looked life-like, so much so that the messiness of the dishes in the sink they were near was a bit too real to look at. Disgusting…

Parker proceeded to spend the next few minutes exploring the room and trying to interact with whatever they knew they could. Pulling open the fridge and grabbing and moving around the fruit in it. Playfully giving the punching bag a few good jabs and watching it swing around as a result. They did try to interact with both doors, but the doors didn't really seem to react to them. Locked maybe, probably so the creators of this VR system didn't have to render areas outside the apartment yet.

During the process of their exploration Parker came back to the table to inspect what was on it better. Mostly random objects like a fruit basket and a magnifying glass. The only object of interest that was on it was a small picture frame showcasing a picture of Brok, Graff, and Brok’s… wife was it? Parker couldn't remember due to how long it's been since that incomplete stream attempt…

Their random interactions were cut short however as the silence of the room was yet again broken. However instead of it being the voice of their contractor, it was the sound of static crackling nearby. Putting down the picture frame Parker looks up to find where the crackling was coming from. The source was from a newly manifested object that was in the space between the punching bag and the fridge: a coat rack stand (and a hat that was hanging on one of its hooks) that was just glitching in and out of existence.

"Uhhh,” Parker starts to speak into the earpiece, “There seems to be an object here that just appeared and started glitching…”

It takes a few seconds for the woman on the other side to respond. "Hm. That might be some leftover code from an object that we had to remove. If the sound annoys you just touch it and it'll disappear. I'll make sure to have my technicians deal with it after this test…"

Parker rolled their eyes. Just touch it and it'll disappear? Something about the flippant lack of protocol didn't sit well with them. They stepped over towards the glitchy coat rack and tried to wave a hand through it to dispel it. However the moment their arm touched the pole they, just for a second, felt the hardness of the pole meet their arm before they were given a sudden and rather violent shock.

"AGH-" Parker yelled out, the young adult quite literally stunned by the interaction as they felt electricity(?) flow through their body.

Their earpiece activates again with their contractor plainly saying, "I suggest immediate removal of the headset and vacating the-" before her voice got cut off, as if the connection got severed.

Before Parker got much of a chance to try and do the few instructions they could hear, the object blipped out of existence and they were promptly sent flying onto the ground. And in just the few seconds they spent in the air the physicality of the space was made tangible as the feeling of the headset and hand controllers faded away. The initially virtual world around him was realized in a literal way, and their physical body seemingly manifested into it from the shock. They then fell onto their back, Parker groaning out in pain. It also seemed that the purple fedora that was perched on the coat rack remained in reality, descending onto Parker’s chest as they laid flat on their back.

Slowly, Parker got up as they scratched the back of their head. "What happened there…" they asked to themself, the overall bizarreness of the previous chain of events making it take a while before everything clicked in their brain. "Wait a moment-"

They stopped scratching their head and brought their arms forward, and then they slowly lowered their gaze to their body.

"...did- did that thing digitize me or something!?"

Ignoring the fedora that was perched on their chest they quickly stood up, slight panic starting to course through them. This shouldn't have been possible… right? They were well aware that strangely advanced technologies existed, especially since their whole channel was built on one, but something like this did feel a bit… much.

“Aw jeez, how am I going to get out of this…?” they posited. While the idea of being in a video game sounded kind of fun, they weren't really sure if they wanted to be stuck in one. Much less without their permission!

Parker’s eyes were brought to the front door of the room. Curious, they walked over towards it and gave the knob a shake. They could hear a series of clicks signifying it could open.

"This isn't bound by the confines of code anymore…" they observed. Was he digitized or was this place made real around him? Were they placed in the game or did they somehow get transported in the reality the game had been based on? Lifting a hand up, they scratched their head in thought. “Jeez, this is getting confusing now.”

Parker's mind begins to drift, thoughts of concern filling their head as they try to fully process what is going on and how they're even meant to interact with this world now. Was this the actual reality of Brok now? Or was this some strange empty space in a harddrive? It couldn't be that second thing, but even then what would this even be considered if they weren't digitized in the first place!? Their thinking left them distracted and unaware, something that allowed the true effects of the shock steadily become more tangible without Parker noticing yet.

A bright shade of green begins to creep in from the tips of their fingers, slowly but surely spreading across them with ease. This change in skin tone was caused by their skin itself altering, the softness of it getting tougher as it was steadily getting transformed into what seemed to be scales. This wave of scales continued to move its way down the fingers of both hands, a secondary change being added to them as they began to thicken as well. Each finger swelled up with size getting thicker and longer, and it didn't take long for them to get fat to the point of being almost sausagey. It would also seem two fingers on each hand got squished into each other, Parker now being left with only four-fingered hands.

Their hands themselves weren't left unscathed either as they too got affected by the scales overtaking them. The backs got consumed by the rough greens, meanwhile the palms maintained a level of softness as they got taken over by a brighter shade of green. Their size underwent the same types of changes as well, their once flatter appearance filling up and bloating to become of equal density with his fatter fingers. They were also stretching out in all directions and enlarging to a much wider width. It didn't take very long for both hands to garner a significant, almost cartoony plumpness that looked humorous when compared to their thinner arms and body.

That disparity didn't last though. The cuffs of the sleeves of their jacket began to tighten as the changes in their skin started to cascade upwards onto and beyond their wrists, steadily increasing the diameter of each wrist in the process. The main site of importance was Parker's forearms however. Bulk began to pile onto them as an odd feeling of strength was coursing through them and their muscle mass was shifting as a result. Their forearms were thickening in size due to their muscle mass getting more developed. This all caused the lower ends of their jacket sleeves to get filled as a result.

Their upper arms weren't left out either as they too began to quickly swell in size. Greens moved beyond his elbows and layered onto his flesh, and beneath it all their biceps bloated with their triceps increasing alongside them. The fabric of his jacket got indented with the ridges of their muscles, and it would seem that the short sleeves of their undershirt were quick to fill. This progressed further as their deltoids bloated up and got rounder, their shoulders now broadening as a result. The once lanky form of Parker’s limbs had already gained a substantial difference in size, now almost reaching a point that they were double their previous size thanks to this instantaneous workout. While the sturdy denim of their jacket just barely managed to hold their muscled arms, the much softer material of their undershirt wasn't faring as well and had already begun to split across their bigger biceps and shoulders.

The sound of tearing piercing the air snapped Parker out of their spiral of confuzzlement. “Did my shirt just- whaaat the hell-”

The sight of their arms was a strange one. What had once been unimpressive, average-sized limbs that allowed their jacket to hang off them had now been replaced with firm, muscular, stronger arms that practically stretched the denim of their jacket with ease. For Parker such a sight wasn't necessarily off-putting, mainly considering their usages of Change4Change on their livestreams, but the fact it's happening is a reason for concern.

Parker eyes one of their arms, giving it a flex and watching as the muscles of it further press into the material of their jacket. “Maybe digitization isn't the only thing that's happening,” they then unflexed and held the arm out, inspecting their hand next. Green and scaley with such fat fingers. It was a sight that made deducing what was happening a rather simple task. They were transforming to fit this new reality they were shunted into it seemed, and the person they were becoming was the titular protagonist of the game the original simulation was based off of…

“...fuck that sounds cool actually-”

The air of confusion and concern had begun to fade in that instant as Parker came to some kind of internal ultimatum. Especially since the idea of becoming the InvestiGator himself was not an unappealing one by any means…

Meanwhile, the changes had not halted during Parker’s form inspection. Especially since it didn't take very long for the scales to jump from their arms to their chest, their frame now widening beneath the shifting skin and formulating a broader appearance. And as the scales crept onto the front of their body, the appearance changed as the color shifted from a standard green to a more yellowish-green tone. This was more than a change in tone as well, the original hardness of the scales now instead becoming a median between the softness of human skin and the toughness of gator scales. Parker was effectively getting a reptilian underbelly, something that was also causing their chest to fill out substantially.

At first it began with a growth in muscle mass, Parker’s pectoral muscles steadily growing in size and muscularity with ease. Swelling out thicker and stronger, the core of their body heating up as the shelf of their chest extended forward with each passing second. It wouldn't take long for their undershirt to already get indented with Parker’s newly deepening cleavage. However it was evident that this wasn't the only change happening to the upper portion of their body. While the firmness of their chest existed, it didn't take very long for it to start getting shrouded beneath another layer of something.

Formulating around Parker’s chest was a layer of fat, one that was quick to accumulate around their new muscles. This resulted in a significant softness forming in their chest, the previous raw meatiness getting melted into something more squishy and flabby. The upper body strength still existed of course, but it was accentuated with pudge that made their pecs absolutely squeezable in contrast to the scaliness of it. All the while their chest still grew in size a bit more, growing in tandem with Parker’s wider frame. Although for the most part it was causing their chest to press against their undershirt even more. It was a wonder that the torso section wasn't splitting as well…

Concurrent with the changes of Parker’s upper torso, the lower half of it was undergoing a similar if not more drastic change. As the yellowish-green scales of their new underbelly grew more prominent, their abdominal muscles began to harden and solidify while strength coarsed through them with ease. However it was quick to garner a layer of fat, and in this region of their body it was quickly evident it wasn't just going to settle as just a layer. A bloating sensation was quick to fill their belly as it began to swell outwards. With each passing second, the hem of their shirt steadily rode up their stomach as it grew bigger, rounder, fatter. And it would only progress that way for a while. More and more fat just filling up the area, the sheer roundness of their belly getting increasingly more prominent to the point that it was easily becoming more of a gut than anything else. Ample size, soft yet firm, and hiding some level of muscle beneath it all. By the time this portion of the changes slowed their newly developed gut had pushed their undershirt completely above it, exposing it to the air and showing the scaley and segmented appearance of what was now their underbelly.

Parker found themselves leaning against the door, feeling the weight steadily piling onto them thanks to both their muscle and fat. “O-ough. This-” they paused, a light tingle entering their throat and forcing them to clear it to try and dispel it. “This feels kinda good…”

Blinking a few times, they register the throat tingle a second time. They also noticed a chance to their voice seeming to begin kicking in. It was beginning to sound a little bit… deeper? And the tone of it was a bit off. “It's getting to my voice too, huh?”

Parker couldn't help but smile though. “Brok did have a pretty cute voice from what I recall…”

With that they go from leaning to their side to leaning on their front, their forehead on the door as their gaze was fixated on their belly. They give it a nice rub with one of their hands, feeling up the softer feeling scales. By this point a level of grogginess was beginning to set into their brain. A light fog slowly rolled into their mental space, that lightness very slowly intensifying as seconds passed. It was steadily getting harder to focus on the transformation process, especially with this growing feeling of… something in their mind. Familiarity? Normalcy? It was hard to discern.

At the very least that mental haze made Parker unable to notice that their height had been altering all this time. Their back had already grown rather broad at this point to fit with Parker’s now wider form, and their trapezius muscles were already pushed up against their undershirt and indenting their jacket. And it wasn't very long until this already garnered wideness forced the back of their undershirt to split open, light blue cotton tearing to reveal dark green scales. Their spine had decompressed a bit with the discs of each vertebrae growing a little larger to fit their new proportions. All the while a pair of blunt spikes lined the region of scales above their spine, steadily forming down until they found their way to the base of it. Once it did reach the base however, something strange began to occur.

At first it only felt like a tug. A small amount of pressure in their tailbone that only gave mild discomfort. But with the progression of time that small feeling got bigger. Pressure was constantly building up, a growing lump forming above their rear, and that lump growing larger and larger as the pressure continued to grow linearly. Parker could only grit their teeth as they felt this happening, the once minor discomfort now becoming a major one. They could feel the lump start to push against the back of their pants, pull against their belt, and in general just exert immense amounts of force on their legwear that it was not accustomed to. This tug of war would only continue for a few seconds more though, as once enough pressure finally built up…

SHRRRP!!!

THUD!

“GRRAGHH!!!”

Shards of denim fly from behind them as a massive, spiky tail unfurled its way out from the base of Parker’s spine. It lands on the floor with a mighty thud and its length still increases for a few seconds more. Although it would seem its impressive girth was shrinking, already tapering to a rounded tip. Nonetheless, Parker now sported the lengthy tail of a gator. One that they were checking out, the transforming adult seeming to already get a hang of moving it.

“Heheh, quite the trouble you caused there, huh?” Parker said with a smile, their voice continuing to deepen more with each word. The tone had now been given a more masculine edge as well. They didn't seem to care though, instead choosing to give the base of their tail a nice rub. This distracted them from the fact they were now losing height.

The green scales were quick to find their way to Parker’s legs, now rapidly overtaking the skin of them. Beneath it all came another slew of physical changes not unlike the ones that happened in their arms. Leg muscles began to grow, quadriceps and hamstrings bulking up and easily making indents within the denim of Parker’s jeans. All while their muscles were maturing, they pressed up against the bones of Parker's legs and changed them. Where they gained some wideness they also lost some length. An event that had caused Parker’s initial height loss, something that gave them a more top-heavy appearance as a result. The same structural changes to their leg bones would also happen to their lower legs as they too were consumed by scales. This also caused the feeling of the crus of their legs starting to swell, calves ballooning outwards and their jeans continuing to strain over their legs in a futile attempt to contain their thickening form. It wouldn't take very long for a few tears to form to the sides of their legwear. Now the only area of their lower body that was not washed over by the sea of scales were their feet. This wouldn't last long however…

Spreading across their soles was a pale green, meanwhile a standard shade of green was forming down from the sides and over the upper portion of their feet. Concurrently they were also growing in size, getting thicker, larger, longer, and wider. Unfortunately however, their feet were confined to their shoes. As their size increased it caused the material to bulge and strain in an attempt to continue to contain them. As their toes pressed into the toecap the amount of bulges in the cloth shifted from five to four, and then to three large bumps that were now just aching to get out. The sides of their footwear were expanding and steadily starting to split and crack, and they could feel their fatter heels dig into the back of them as well. The strings that held them together creaked and snapped with ease as the newly forming wideness of their feet was becoming too much. Then rips started to form at the front as their toenails sharpened, their composition shifting and hardening into something more boney, now poking out and becoming a triad of claws. Soon enough the bulges that were caused by his toes were too much as well, the fronts of their shoes splitting open and finally giving them some air. This then caused a chain reaction in the rest of his footwear with it steadily breaking apart and shattering in one large burst that sent pieces of blue cloth flying in the air.

The sound of Parker’s shoes exploding took their attention away from their tail. Looking down at their feet they were greeted with the two being fully transformed and covered in shreds of cloth and string. Although all they really did was shake the destroyed remnants of their shoes off each foot. “Havin’ trouble recalling why I was even wearing those…”

They cleared their throat again. The strange sensation from earlier was fading, and it was evident their voice was settling to that new tone. Deep and masculine with a certain quality to it. Caring, but able to switch to something more aggressive at the flip of a dime if need be.

Perhaps the weird part however was the fact they were just… unable to view their voice as anything different now. There was a part of them that could just barely breach the topic to themselves that this was Brok’s voice and not theirs, but at the same time their brain just had trouble discerning their original identity. Like it was getting muddled beneath all the fog in their mind. And even then when they could think of something it was something different and more natural…?

“Come to think of it, I'm having trouble recalling a lot of things right now…” they- he raised his hand and started to scratch his head in confusion. He could've sworn he was just thinking about… leaving a… something or other…

As his mind drifts to another bout of confusion, the scales slowly move beyond his neck and onto his head. The yellowish-green scales were perhaps the first to make the transition by going from beneath his jaw to layering his chin, and then easily surrounding his mouth. As the scales in this shade gained more surface area around his lower face it prompted a dramatic shift in his skull structure. Slowly his lower face pushed out, lower jaw jutting forward as the region beneath his eyes followed suit. This was causing a gator-like muzzle to form out from his face, his jawline restructuring to fit this new animalistic appearance while it also gained a certain broadness that managed to grant him a more masculine visage from the jawline alone. Meanwhile as the upper portion of his muzzle grew forward, his nose steadily merged into the tip of it until there were nothing more than two holes at the front of it. The bridge of the muzzle’s upper half got consumed by darker green scales as it bubbled, getting rougher and bumpier in the process of the changes. Meanwhile within his mouth all of his started to shift, changing and sharpening while repositioning and misaligning. A few teeth even poked out from between his now longer mouth.

While the lighter colored scales stayed at the lower half of his face, the darker colored ones made the remainder of his head their territory. The sides of his face extending a bit and rounding out, the anthropomorphic qualities of his appearances yet against being accentuated thanks to the fat accumulation around his cheeks. Despite that, the structure of his skull still shifted as the humanity of it was lost to the more reptilian appearance it was taking. As the scales reached the direct sides of his head they also consumed his ears, the process shrinking them rapidly until he was just left with small holes for auditory intake.

Meanwhile he continued to scratch his head, the initial act now changing to him dealing with a major itch on his scalp. Something he was unaware was being caused by the roots of his hair getting pushed out by his scales. It wasn't even a slow experience as, thanks to his massive hands, large chunks of his long hair sloughed off with ease. Brown strands and follicles slipping away due to his touch, the side bangs dropping away while the portion of his hair that was above his forehead slid off his head in an instant. His bun wasn't even given time to unfurl as in one fell swoop it disconnected from the back of his head and dropped to the ground. It wouldn't take long for all of his hair to drift and fall off his scalp and onto the floor, now leaving him with the scaley dome of a gator.

As his eyebrows succumbed to a similar fate, the ridges of his brows pushed forward and above his eyes while also getting thicker and more rectangular. Meanwhile his eyes themselves changed, sclera going from white to yellow as the blueness of his irises faded to black. Although it would seem the changes to his eyes represented something more significant.

“Urgh, I- I had a job I was supposed to do, right…?”

His thoughts and memories only continued to change beneath the haze in his mind. He could just barely recall the idea of a VR test supposedly happening, but the details were practically non-existent now. Something was pressing into that part of his brain, saying it was too early for something like that and that he had to do something else. He had other jobs he was meant to be doing that day.

Wasn't he called in for an investigation…? He could've sworn he was just hired for something.

The gator let out a growl. “These memory lapses can't be getting… that bad, can they…?”

Right, he could recall he had the occasional loss in memory. But that usually came up with stuff from his past, not something that should've happened just a few minutes ago! Something about this just wasn't adding up. Maybe he should just check his phone again, try and shuffle through his messages or call history.

He tries to shove a hand in one of his pants pockets, but quickly finds that he can't even jam in all his fingers. That's when the gator looks down at his body and notices his clothing. “W-wait, I didn’t- a-argh-”

A piercing headache suddenly wracked his brain, the anthropomorphic gator shutting his eyes while squeezing the side of his head with a hand. The haze in his brain intensified and the rest of an entirely new identity was getting shoved into him.

With his mental changes intensifying there was one last visible change occurring, this time to his extremely ill-fitting clothing. A single dot of dark coloring formed in the middle of his undershirt, and soon that splotch spread across the material at a rapid pace. Said shirt was growing as well, sleeves and back repairing and restitching while the hem unfurled and stretched over his stomach more easily. The dark coloring proved itself to be a simple shade of black that overtook the shirt’s original light blue and white coloration. In the end it was a relatively simple change though, his undershirt eventually settling into a black t-shirt that still was a bit small on him judging by the bottom of it revealing a sliver of his stomach and the top of it still having an indent of his chest.

His jacket was mirroring the size changes as well, growing larger to fit his new proportions (and in this case seeming to actually fit them properly). Shades of reddish-brown etched their way across the once blue denim, and everywhere the brown touches changes material to a harder leather instead. While his jacket collar extends a bit, another part of his jacket split folds beneath it and forms a lapel. The pockets of his jacket seal shut to the point they've never existed, and a pair of leather epaulets bulge from the jacket shoulders. Lastly the sleeves of his now brown leather jacket roll upwards and cuff above his elbows. Additionally, the multi-colored bandana that was on his right arm unfurled itself and started to whisk itself to his neck. The soft material shifted and thinned dramatically, practically dethreading in mid-air until it was just a black string that tied itself around his neck. Then came a bright yellow glow above his chest, an almost silvery pendant materializing onto that string.

The very last piece of clothing that changed was his pants. While they remained jeans, they also lengthened to fit his bulkier legs while fixing themselves of the damage they got during his initial transformation. As the legs of his jeans lengthened, they also rolled up and cuffed at the bottom of his own legs. As the back of his pants rethreaded to allow a tail-hole to exist in the seat of his jeans, the belt loop stretched above the very base of his tail that allowed for a brown leather belt to snake its way around his waist. A soft clink was then heard as its silver buckle fastened. The very final change came to his pockets where the four of them merged and bulged into thick and bulky gusset pockets, one of which now holding his new phone.

A metal plate slapped itself onto the gator's snoot as the last of the mental changes were hauled in. A new identity and memories whirling around the reptile’s brain, filling in blanks and replacing what was originally there with ease. Thoughts of his original humanity were getting buried under a new perception of humanity. One that was more animalistic and diverse in forms. Meanwhile his own knowledge was getting overhauled, technological experience being dulled drastically. If anything he garnered a certain level of disdain for more complex works of technological advancement that he could never get working right. Although that may also be because he gained a little over ten years of age both physically and mentally.

This all caused his previous job as a streamer to get flushed down the mental drainpipe. Instead all he could recall was his typical work as a handyman, the knowledge required for such a profession replacing the mental spot that his technological expertise had once resided. However, the most important aspect of his personhood soon followed. That being the justice-seeking desires of his detective work, and the slightly aggressive tendencies of his brawler persona. Such aspects of himself that mixed and meshed on a frequent basis, so much so that they were ingrained in his personality. Traits that made him Brok. Of course there were still multiple other personality traits that got overloaded into him though. Self-doubt and worry, a crippling fear of being alone, a slight hair-trigger temper that he has been attempting to suppress more and more. But despite all of that, he had an intense level of care and love that existed within his mind.

Brok continued to hold his head in his hands as his brain was absolutely overladen with details and info, something that almost completely scrubbed whatever prior thought patterns he had had before this. It also left his attention almost completely dulled.

“Ough, head… spinning…”

“...rok?” a voice echoed from near the gator.

“Whuh… who-”

Suddenly the gator’s mental haze was shattered as a finger tapped his shoulder a few times.

“What the-” Brok yelled out, the spirals in his eyes being blinked out as he was startled by the sudden touch. “O-oh, Graff!”

Having been standing behind him for the past… who knows how long was his feline step-son Graff. Said feline had a slight look of concern on his face. “Woah- you looked a little zonked there.”

“I- wuh…” Brok scratched the back of his head in confusion. “Admittedly I… don't remember what I was doing just about now,” the gator gave a nervous smile.

Graff raised a brow in suspicion. “Oookay then. I just heard some yelling and…” The anthropomorphic cat began to trail off as he looked down to the floor and noticed what seemed to be brown fur(?) and shreds of hard blue cloth cluttering the area around Brok’s feet. “The heck went on there?”

Brok looked down as well. “...I'm not quite sure about that either.”

“...right,” at this point it just seemed like Graff was giving up on questioning whatever went on in the past few minutes. “Guess we'll just need to have the cleaning bot fix it?”

Brok’s eyes widened at the mention of the cleaning bot. Nervously rubbing that back of his head he said, “O-oh, about that…”

“You didn't get it fixed yet, did you?”

“...no. I was going to have Shay do it but got distracted with… work stuff.”

Graff just rolled his eyes, the sight making Brok cringe. An extremely strange stray thought at the back of his mind made him wonder how many relationship points he just lost. Weird…

Brok still mustered a smile. “I'll make sure to try and get it repaired while out today! Consider that a promise!”

Graff didn't look convinced, but judging by his ears perking up a bit it would seem he was hopeful in his step-dad’s making it a promise. “Alright, alright… just uh,” he smirked, “Don't forget the hat.”

Brok raised a hand to the apex of his head and gave his scalp a few pats. “O-oh! Where did…” his gaze wandered to the area of the room with the punching bag and found the fedora on the ground. Walking over towards it he commented, “How the heck did that thing get off me without me noticing!”

He then placed the fedora onto his head and smiled. “Okay, now I'm gone!”

Graff just gives the gator a nod as the reptile starts to make his way to the door and leave the apartment. Although he does smile at the sight of Brok pausing as he kicked some ridiculously large looking furball. Brok just sighed as he watched the furball roll into a corner.

“Seriously, how did this mess get made…”

#character tf #tf #transformation #species tf #weight gain tf #reptile tf

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mykashg · 4 months

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Gifset request please! Can you do a comparison of Ruby walking in on Ava in the VR headset and looking embarrassed compared to Ava laughing and filming Deb playing VR. Thank you 🙏😋

here you go!!! can't believe ava got that for her everyone comment if you have a headcanon about what d got for ava

#asks

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isfjmel-phleg · 1 year

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YJ bedroom comparisons Part 2: the girls! (Part 1 is here.)

Cassie

As far as I know, she only has one room over the course of her pre-2003 appearances. There's no indication that she and her mom ever move. But the look and layout of her room begins as inconsistent across various artists, and even when a settled design emerges, it continues to change depending on the artist.

The earliest approach to Cassie's room, as drawn by her creator, shows a very small space with lavender walls. There is a bed with a teal and black checkered bedspread and built-in bookshelves, an armoire (in addition to the closet), a desk and chair, and a laundry basket.

The clutter is a mixture of her childhood possession and current interests. She has multiple teddy bears and a Superman plush, board games, books, and a record player and records. There's a glimpse of a computer keyboard on desk, and lots of posters and art and paper on the walls and doors, especially posters of heroes like Wonder Woman and the Flash. The floor is littered with scattered laundry and hangers. This is the bedroom of a typical girl with a normal childhood and a lot of admiration for superheroes, which is accurate.

(Wonder Woman 1987 #113)

Two other early views of her room are inconsistent with this and don't show much. One is painted blue-grey and the other orange. The first gives glimpses of posters and photos; the other shows shelves full of books and boxes (including one helpfully labeled "BOX"), a dresser, and a Little Nemo poster.

(Wonder Woman 1987 #139 and 147)

The next version is yet again completely different but will win out as the prototype of her room's "official" look. It has lavender walls (maybe Cassie was experimenting with painting her room and decided to go back to the earlier color?) and a slanted roof. The bed has pink sheets and a blue bedspread and shelves built into the headboard, and there is a round nightstand with shelves, a desk and chair, and a blue rug.

She's a little older now, and her possessions are starting to reflect more teenage interests alongside her childhood stuff. She has multiple plush toys (including Pikachu, a hippo, and a turtle), books, a wind-up toy, what looks like a VR headset (?), a phone, papers and a pencil, a boombox and a few CDs, schoolbooks, a mug, a bag, scattered clothes and shoes, a computer keyboard on the desk, and an absolute shrine of Superboy posters and photos, plus a poster of a girl band called Spice World (no celebrities were harmed etc.) The "No Dou[bt]" sticker on her headboard might be a reference to the "No Fear" logo, which was everywhere in the late 90s/early 2000s.

(Wonder Woman 1987 #153)

Cassie's room as portrayed in YJ 1998 is clearly intended to be the same as the room above but with some modifications. The roof no longer slants, the walls are pink, and there is pink carpet instead of a hardwood floor. The furniture is the same, although the bedspread is now pink and she has a Flash throw pillow, and there are additions of a bookshelf, a dresser, and a blue plastic blow-up chair (very late 90s/early 2000s! I think one of my sisters had something like it).

Her décor is aggressively Teenage Girl of the Turn of the Millennium. There are posters that directly reference or parody bands and TV shows of that era (Frontstreet Boys, Spice Girls, Wendy the Werewolf Stalker, Dalton's Creek), something that might be anime ("Ja[...] Warrior"), and superheroes (Flash, Green Lantern, Superboy--only one now and it's behind the door rather than prominently displayed).

Cassie is just as messy as the boys! Items visible include a jar of gumballs, books (including one with "MST3K" on the spine), a pen, a snow globe, a framed photo of her and Cissie, a lamp, comics (Flash and others), a figurine (Pokemon?), an alarm clock, a candle(?), a soda can and chip bag, scattered clothes, a boombox and CDs, a phone, a magazine called Mega Teen, multiple plush toys (including a blue Pikachu, some kind of antennaed alien, and Superman), a duffle bag, a basketball, action figures, a TV, a piggy bank, a framed photo of Diana, a trash can, a bulletin board, a computer at her desk, and sticky notes nearby reminding her to call Cissie and tape MST3K and read certain pages for science.

(Young Justice 1998 #16)

(Young Justice 1998 #19)

A different artist during the Sins of Youth arc depicts the same room but with colors changed yet again: lavender walls and blue carpet with a brown bedspread. There are many of the same items as above but with additions including a horse poster, Titanic posters, potted plants, an astronaut action figure (Buzz Lightyear?), and even more plush toys including a tiger and a cat and a rabbit.

Here, an aged-up Cassie laments how stereotypically youthful her room is, and it's an accurate assessment (although nothing for her to be ashamed of--she is a teenage girl, why shouldn't her room reflect that?). Out of all her team, she has led the most normal, stable life, with a complete childhood, and her room attests to this.

(Sins of Youth: Wonder Girls #1)

Cissie

The earliest room we see for her is her dorm room at the Saint Elias School for Girls, where she lives for the entirety of the YJ 1998 run. At this point, Cissie is still using the frilly costume that her mother provided her, and her room similarly is aggressively girly, especially for a dorm. It has pink walls with a floral border and pink bedding. There's also a desk and bookcase.

Cissie's belongings reflect her archery career and her connections to superheroes. On her wall are a poster of Superman, photos, and a bulletin board. A Batman plush and three teddy bears are her only concessions to childish interests. There's also a lamp, a framed photo of Bonnie King as Miss Arrowette, first-place ribbons and trophies, and books (including such titles as C. E. Letters, Broken Arrow, Shaft, The Life and Works of Ethan Van Sciver, Works (or Words?) of Crybaby, a photo album, Kaniuga: Missing Link, Advanced Archery, JHR's Genius, Kupp's Darkseid, The Biography of Oliver Queen, Robin Hood, William Tell, and Views of L.A. Some of these are references to the names of this issue's writer, penciler/inker, colorist, letterer, and editors!).

(Impulse #41)

Cissie's dorm in YJ 1998 appears to be the same room (now specified as 118), judging by the placement of the furniture and poster, but it is now completely redecorated in a more neutral style that more realistically reflects a dorm room. The walls and bedspread are now blue-gray, and there is crown molding instead of a border. The desk has been moved to the other end of the room. New additions include an alien plush (in place of her earlier stuffed toys), a dresser with mirror, and a computer.

(Young Justice 1998 #20)

By #27, she is rooming with Traya Sutton (Red Tornado's adopted daughter, and they're in Room 356, but we don't get a good look at it until later.

This dorm room has light blue walls and bedspreads, two beds with nightstands and bookshelves, a desk, shelves of boxes, and a window with a window seat between the beds.

Cissie has a bulletin board with something about MST3K pinned to it (a mutual interest with Cassie), a box of filed fan mail, an alarm clock, books, framed photos (an unidentified boy, and her with Cassie), a plush toy, an archery trophy, a 2000 Olympic archery poster, and a Wendy the Werewolf Stalker poster after she guest-stars on that show.

Unlike the other kids, she is tidy in her habits (probably a necessity while living in a dorm where there would be regular room inspections), and her possessions are more overtly grown-up, especially when compared to the much younger Traya's things. Her "fun" items are minimal, she doesn't seem to have many fandoms, and most of her things have to do with her accomplishments.

(Young Justice 1998 #30)

(Young Justice 1998 #33)

Greta

She presumably lives at the YJ headquarters, but if she has a room or any kind of personal space there, we never see it, because no one ever hangs out there.

We do see two of her past living spaces in flashbacks. First, her cell at the DEO. It has light green walls and minimal furnishings: a brown rug, a bed with white bedding, and a table with two chairs (why two? she's in there alone). The DEO has given her a paper and crayons (it looks like she's drawn a tree), a book, and a couple of dolls and their hairbrush, probably in order for them to study how she interacts with these items. There is no décor and no apparent other possessions, and worst of all, the room is windowless with a glass ceiling. She has no privacy at all and cannot leave this room (until she figures out how to escape).

(Young Justice: The Secret #1)

(Impulse #56)

A far cry from Greta's childhood bedroom, which we see as it was when she was very young. It has pink walls and carpet, a bed with a blue bedspread with a pattern of yellow ducks and pink and white striped sheets, and a dresser. She has Barbies and their clothes and accessories with a dollhouse and car, action figures, a hairbrush, a ball, something that looks like an easel, a drawing she made of a rainbow and birds, another doll and a plush toy, a pink and white shoe under the bed, a lamp, a frog clock, and a copy of Alice in Wonderland. Very typical possessions for a little girl. She's the only one of the YJ girls who is seen to have owned dolls (her Barbies even briefly transform into her YJ friends during this flashback).

(Young Justice 1998 #42)

Anita

We get a very brief glimpse of her bedroom at home. Blue walls and carpet, white bed, nightstand, and desk. She has posters of Wendy the Werewolf Stalker (like almost all the other girls!) and someone called "Crisq[...]", a lamp, a glass of water, a small box/container, a plush toy (Martian Manhunter?), a book, a pen, paper, and scattered clothing. Not overly revealing of her interests, but a general impression of a typical teenage girl's room.

(Young Justice 1998 #35)

#comicsposting again #YJ: so glad we found each other #CS: she radiates sincerity #CK-J: I'm happier being myself #GH: I'd give anything to be normal #AF: my wish is your command #I am amused that three out of four of these girls have Wendy the Werewolf Stalker posters #while diehard fan Kon (who's probably the one who got them all started on the show) apparently doesn't

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