#and corruption aint gonna help here

[forkaround]

The gifs of Golden Blood look so good, but episode 1 was so stupid. I don't know if I want to continue or not...

[huffle-dork]

Swap Across the CrystalVerse Chapter 17: The Bad End

Read Swapboys | Crystal’s AUs| You've reached a Bad End (Also on AO3!)

Read SITCV | SATCV Masterpost | AO3 Link

"You do look more like me wearing that," Chase comments, looking over Bro in his new clothes. "The hand-me-down look really seals it. Sorry if they don't fit. We have, uh, limited options while living in a cave. At least they're clean."

Bro laughs, "It's okay- we're pretty similar just… bigger… arms I guess."

"You can say bigger muscles- I think Chase's self esteem was already shot just by seeing them~!" Jackie grins.

"Hey! Don't be mean! It's not like… I'm showing off! It's just! What happens when you fight crime!" Bro protests.

Chase laughs. "Don't worry, I'm not too concerned about being built. I'm more of a long range guy."

Stacy pokes her head into the storage cavern where Chase, Bro, Jackie, and Sam are waiting. "Are you guys done in here?"

The two swaps look at Stacy and Bro tries to hide his blush at seeing her as he adjusts the outfit. "u-uh yeah! I think so!"

"Great." Stacy nods. "I found a group of people who are going to come along."

Someone else leans into view. They have short dark hair underneath a blue beanie and are wearing a black jacket and skirt with leggings. "Hey." They wave.

"Oh! This is Raven, they're one of those people," Stacy says. "They wanted to meet you."

"Not often you hear about people from another world." Raven grins. "Nice to meet you. I'm the magician."

"Oh! A magician! That's great!" Bro grins. "We could use any help we can get!"

'Nice to meet ya, Raven!" Jackie smiles.

"Heh." Raven smiles. "Happy to help. If you get paused in time I'm able to unfreeze you. That's why I'm coming."

"Oh awesome! That'll make this way easier!" Bro laughs.

"Stacy, are you gonna go, too?" Chase asks.

"Are you?" Stacy asks him.

"I, uh… I want to help. But I think it'll make the whole decoy thing hard."

Jackie looks at Chase and then shrugs, "If you stay with us and hidden- it should be fine! Once Bro starts using his powers it gonna be real obvious it aint you so-"

"That's true…" Chase muses. "Alright. I'll go. I'm an alright marksman, I can stay hidden from a distance."

Stacy nods. "In that case, I won't go. It's too dangerous for both of us to leave. Just in case something happens to one group."

Chase nods. "Alright. Where's Jack, by the way?"

Sam gets off the box They're sitting on and wraps Their nerve-tail around something inside. A small pen. They awkwardly write letters on the lid of the cardboard box. A-L-T.

"He's still with Alt?" Chase asks. "Huh."

Jackie frowns. "… I feel like that's been a long time."

Bro looks worried. "Do you think they're both okay?"

Chase bites his lip. "I don't think anything could've happened to Jack. You literally can't touch him, yknow? But… something could be…" He shakes his head, not wanting to say it in front of Bro and Jackie. "I-it'll probably be fine. If everyone's ready, we should start moving right away. Jackie, are you gonna come?"

"Yeah man! I can be moral support if anything. But, also like- whats the saying… better with numbers…?" Jackie frowns. "Why can't I remember how that goes-"

Bro laughs, "Please try to stay away from any place you can fall and break something, Jackie-"

"Nooo promises!" Jackie grins.

"You want a gun, then? Or a knife?" Stacy asks, pushing open the lid of a crate.

"Oh- a knife please. Imma a terrible shot." Jackie laughs.

"Alright, here you go." Stacy grabs a sheathed knife and hands it to him. "That looks the right size for you. Feel free to slash away, the corrupted don't feel pain and they don't go down easily."

"ooh- that's.. fun. Good to know." Jackie says, taking the knife.

Bro frowns, "huh… i gotta be careful then… I don't wanna like- accidentally… you know-"

"Accidentally kill them? You're that strong?" Chase asks with wide eyes.

Bro flushes, "…I dunno! mmmmaybe? I haven't tried to! I'm very against killing- but I usually try to hold back once I see someone in pain."

"Yknow, Trisha once shot Error point-blank with a shotgun and he got up again, I think you punching them really hard won't do that much," Stacy says. "Just don't aim for the heads. These are still people under all the corruption."

Bro nods to Stacy and wrings out his hands and wrists, "Okay… I can do that. I don't like aiming for the face much anyways. Broken noses aren't fun for anyone… Unless they deserve it. …Broken noses are meant for criminals not mind controlled people. There that's a new super law for me." He nods.

Jackie snorts and rolls his eyes.

Stacy laughs. "Great, good to hear."

"Let's head out, then," Chase says. "The sooner, the better. We need Bro to hang out somewhere with a lot of cameras for him to see, while the rest of us stay out of sight."

Raven nods. "I can keep up an invisibility spell for a while, but everyone will need to stick close to me, it only covers so much ground."

"Alright, good luck guys," Stacy says.

"Thanks Stacy- stay safe okay?" Bro says with a smile. Jackie gives her a two fingered salute.

“Let's go." Chase checks his gun, then leads the way out of the cave.

--------

The door to the room appears, opening up. Jack looks away from Alt and towards it, stiffening. His form is overtaken by white static until he's just the staticky outline he was when Alt first saw him. He puts a finger to his lips.

Alt jumps slightly and then curls up as Jack becomes less solid. He shakily nods.

Error walks in. He looks at Alt and grins. "We're going to take a trip. Come on. Please don't make this difficult."

As Error walks in Alt growls and bares his teeth at him like a feral animal.

"Oh, don't be like that, this is your lucky day! Though you don't think of it that way right now." Error leans down, still grinning. He's not wearing the hoodie outfit from earlier. Instead, it's some red and blue jumpsuit, torn and bloodied. "Come on." His smile drops. "If I have to drag you down there, I will."

"Go ahead and try fucker-" Alt spits. He grins as his eyes spark with energy, "You already know I'm pretty slippery."

"Because of your glitching? Is that it? Hmmm." Error hums. "You know… the Place has a way of taking you where Anti wants you to be. So, sure, you can try. You'll probably just end up where I'm taking you anyway." He flashes a sharp smile. "But if you insist." He grabs Alt by the arm and starts pulling him towards the door.

Alt yelps and then quickly tries to glitch away and out of his grip.

And yet, somehow, Error manages to hold onto him. The static swarming around his body buzzes around Alt's glitches, causing some kind of rough barrier. "Come on," Error says, adjusting his hold so he's pinning Alt's arms to his side. He doesn't sound bothered at all by the struggles as he drags Alt out into the hallway. The static form of Jack follows.

Alt cries out and tries to fight as much as he can. "H-Hey! What the fuck!! Let me go!!"

"Nope!" Error says, almost cheerfully. He continues dragging Alt down the hallway, which slopes and twists downwards. Cables start to appear on the ground, ready to trip people up, but he nimbly dodges them. "Come on, we're almost there!"

Alt feels his stomach drop and dread starts to take over him as he tries even harder to get away. "N-No! C'mon J-Jackie! You're Jackie right?! J-Just let me go man!!"

"I thought I told you before." Error's grip on Alt tightens to the point where it hurts a little. "That's not me anymore." He reaches a door made of metal and opens it up, dragging Alt inside. It's completely dark, impossible to see, but somehow Error navigates it perfectly until he manages to push Alt into a chair, forcing him to sit.

Alt cries out and squirms and kicks as much as he can. When he's forced into the chair he tries to see if he can glitch away-

"No!" Error sees him doing that and pushes him hard back, hard enough that Alt's head clunks against the back of the chair. "Don't you dare," he hisses, quickly grabbing Alt's arms and pushing them into the arms of the chair, where cuffs snap into place. He quickly does the same for his ankles, cuffing them to a bar connecting the chair legs, and then backs up. "Just wait here quietly, okay?"

Alt’s vision flashes white for a second as he head hits the seat. He then struggles and pulls at the restraints, really starting to freak out. Terrified tears gather in his eyes as he starts to heave in panic. “P-Please don’t do this! I-I don’t want to be a puppet again! Please!”

Error grins. "It's not so bad. Maybe you'll find it's different this time. Maybe you'll be happy." And then he turns and leaves the room.

Jack quickly walks into the room before Error closes the door. The room is completely dark now, but Alt can hear Jack's voice. "You're not alone, I promise," he says.

Alt is panicking hardcore, even Jack's voice doesn't calm him down. His eyes try to find any source of light in the room but there's nothing- its dark and he's scared. "J-Jack…! I.. I don't want to be corrupted…! I..! I-"

“I know, I’m sorry,” Jack murmurs. “I-I can’t stop him, a-and I’m sorry. But I can fix it. Just before you guys arrived here, I figured out how to uncorrupt people. But I-I don’t know how to stop the corruption while it’s happening. Only after the fact. And I’m so, so sorry. But I promise people are on the way to help. I promise.”

Alt feels his stomach sinking even more as he hangs his head and tries to hide his panicked tears. He… he has to try to look tough for whatever's coming… he can't show he's weak- but he's so fucking scared.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Jack says. “You’re not alone. It’s going to be—”

Then the door opens again. The lights flick on, revealing the corruption room, just like the one Surgeon showed Mag. Standing in the doorway are two familiar faces. Anti… and Magnificent himself.

“Hey, Alt,” Anti says, grinning as he closes the door.

"Hello cub~" Magnificent giggles.

Alt goes pale. "M-Magnificent…"

Magnificent laughs wildly and teleports to grab Alt's chin, tilting it back and forth. "Awww look at you, kitten! You look fucking terrible~ Scared out of your wits, are we?"

"S-Shut the fuck up!" Alt spits, trying to pull his wet face away from his grip.

Magnificent giggles and teleports back by Anti, grinning. "This is going to be so fucking easy. It's almost sad-"

"Easy would be good, this is never 'easy' in my experience," Anti says. One of the screens on the walls lights up, showing nothing but static, the speakers letting out the sound of white noise. Anti glitches over to a table and starts looking through the items there. "You should probably cover your ears, Magnificent. I don't think it'll be able to affect you so easily, but better safe than sorry. You get started while I decide how to approach this."

"Ah- Yes. I can do that." Mag snaps and puts basically magic earplugs in and then grins, slinking back over to Alt.

Alt tries to pull his head away but Mag grabs him by the hair and slams his head back, giggling. "Oh you poor beaten kitten… your mind has already been scrambled so nicely for me~! So broken and disjointed… It's like you knew to expect me!"

"Mag- f-fucking! Don't do this! You're really g-gonna let me be a puppet for someone else?" Alt tries to growl at him.

Magnificent just shakes head and laughs, "Why not? I want to see how it works~! And you're already such a good puppet for me, Alt… I think I can lend you away for a bit~" He flares up some corruption in his hands- not enough to completely block Alt's magic- but enough to make him weak. He digs his claws into his neck and spreads it there as Alt screams and tries to thrash against it. As he works a bright purple and green spiral looms behind Magnificent- soon drawing in Alt's eyes as Mag withdraws his hand.

Alt weakly lets his head fall back, panting and heaving in panic- but he's starting to do it less- the anger and fear fading from his eyes. Corrupted purple flickers in his eyes but- he tries to fight against it, weakly squirming in his restraints. "n-no… no I… i-"

Anti watches this happen, observing. It really does happen quite quickly. "I've been able to put people in trances before," he says quietly. "But they always shake it off eventually. That sort of reminds me of it." He nods at the spiral, at the way Alt's struggles are fading. "I can work with that."

The white noise in the air sounds less sharp than it did before. More… soothing, almost. Anti walks around behind Alt, carrying something. He snaps it around Alt's neck, revealing it to be a metal collar.

"Alright, Alt," he says quietly, but not kindly. "Here's how it's going to work. If you start to do something wrong, you're going to get hurt. Same thing if you say something bad. Simple enough, right? You can do that, right?"

Magnificent's eyes widen and then he giggles, "Oh… i like where this is going."

Alt snaps slightly out of trance as he feels the collar get snapped onto him. He weakly glares at Anti, eyes sparking. "L-Like i'm gonna just d-do what you say just cuz you ask me- f-fuck off!"

ZAP. Anti can't pulse with electricity the way Alt can, but he has other tools he can use. Namely, a taser, which he presses to the metal of the collar and switches on for a second. "That's a low setting, and I know you can handle electricity," Anti says. "But I promise it can get worse. And I'm not just limited to lightning." He tilts Alt's head back so he can look him in the eyes. "You don't have to fight it, though," he whispers. "You don't have to go through this." He glances back up at Magnificent and nods towards the spiral he has conjured, silently asking him to increase whatever he's doing.

Alt grits his teeth and stiffens in his chair, trying to hide his discomfort. He feels himself get tilted up and he opens his eyes enough to just glare more at Anti. "I-I'm not l-letting myself be corrupted by you���!"

Magnificent tilts his head and the magic gets brighter and hums with intensity. The pressure on the room increases. Mag grips his hand and the corruption on Alt's neck pulses and grows slightly, making purple flash in his eyes as he gasps.

Alt tries to shut his eyes, shaking his head. "No…! Nono-!"

"Why not?" Anti asks. "Remember, I've seen your memories. I know what you've thought. All these Antis out here, doing terrible things. You know that you're not any different. Didn't you try to kill your so-called friends a couple times?"

"T-Those weren't for you to see-" Alt whimpers. "I.. I'm not like that anymore- I don't want to be that anymore…! I'm not like them- I'm not-!" He squeezes his eyes shut tighter, trembling.

ZAP! Anti goes up a setting on the taser. "Don't close your eyes," he snaps.

Alt grits his teeth and bites back another scream. Alt instinctively follows Anti's order and his eyes find the spiral.

"Alright, maybe you're not like that anymore. But you remember what it was like, don't you? Didn't a part of you like being like that? Being able to do whatever the fuck you wanted?"

Alt’s shoulders almost instantly relax as the magic starts to spiral in his eyes. His head lolls back more as he breathes slowly. He leans a bit more against Anti's side, talking hollowly. "… i… i… d..did…"

"That's it kitten… relax… and listen to Anti," Magnificent sings sweetly, increasing the burning magic. "Just like that…"

"I know you did," Anti says, his voice laced with static. "But you feel so bad about it now. Guilt is a useless thing, Alt. All it does is make you feel bad. Life is so much better lived without regrets. Nothing is stopping you from casting these feelings aside and doing something that you like. Even if people say it's wrong, they don't know you. They can't know you. It's impossible to fully know someone, since you can't possibly have thought and felt and experienced everything someone else has. So, why do you care so much about what these people who can't know you think?"

"I… I don't… know…" Alt whispers, knitting his eyebrows together in confusion. "…it… it.. shouldn't… matter…" His eye twitches and he tries to shake out his head, squeezing his eyes shut again as his head pounds. "n-no it m-matters it… it has to- I… I need to- be something b-better…! I…"

ZAP! Up another setting. "Better is arbitrary," Anti hisses. "Good and bad are constructs. Right and wrong are fictional ideas." The static echoes his words. "You only want to be 'better' because others tell you that you should want that. When you strip away those voices, Alt, you know what you really want. And I can help you, like I've helped lots of people before you."

Alt lets out a short scream now, clenching his fists and arching his back. He pants, eyes rolling in his head for a second before they find the spiral again. He starts to relax even more, even through panted short breaths. The magic glows brighter in his eyes as he whispers, "…what… I want…?" He leans his head back and sighs in pain, "i… i wanna be free…"

"Then let me help you," Anti whispers. "Let me free you." He puts one hand on Alt's shoulder. For a moment, he flickers, becoming a figure of black static. Something is in his chest. Right where his heart would be. It looks a little like a heart too, in shape. But it's not. It's a knot of strings, and one of those strings slinks down his arm and into the spot where his hand is touching Alt. Then he returns to his normal look, and the string is gone from sight. But it's still there.

Alt twitches a bit and rolls his shoulder where he feels the string but very quickly relaxes. His eyes glaze over completely and his fighting stops. "…free me, Anti." He whispers, lips hardly moving.

Magnificent giggles with glee, hardly able to stop grinning.

"I will," Anti promises. "Close your eyes. When I tell you to open them again, you'll be free."

Alt's eyes easily slip shut now, his head lolling forward to hang limply over his chest.

"One…" Anti whispers. "Two…" He reaches for the collar. "Three." And he snaps it off. "Wake up, Byte."

Alt's head slowly rises and he opens his eyes. Immediately- they are different. His sclera is now green static. The purple spirals still burn in his irises but… now its like- his pupils are glitching. They don't seem to want to settle, glitching across his iris and sclera in broken bits and pieces.

Byte leans forward and looks confused before his lips curl up into an unsteady smile. He digs his nails into the arms of his chair and starts to giggle. He's dazed- still seeming kinda lost and entranced. He falls back in his chair, letting his head hit the back of it as he dazedly giggles at the ceiling.

"…fascinating…!" Magnificent breathes, his eyes sparkling.

"Everyone reacts to it differently," Anti says. "I've given up on trying to predict how they'll act after the process--but somehow this feels right." He leans back, considering for a moment. "It might not be as well-settled as corruption usually is, but that was really fast. Worth the tradeoff, if you ask me."

"I think it was only so fast because his mind is already very open to my hypnosis. And… whatever happened with you two scrambled his brain and made it very easy to manipulate." Magnificent comments, crossing his arms as he studies Byte. "Still… I haven't seen him like this…"

Anti leans forward again, undoing the cuffs on Byte's wrists and ankles. "Hello there." He smiles at him, somehow managing to look both genuine and crazed at the same time. "How do you feel, Byte?"

Byte dazedly watches as he's freed, smile only getting wider. His eyes get a bit more of that unhinged look in them. He tries to glitch up out of the chair and then falls over himself slightly, giggling madly. He finds Anti's arm and grabs onto it, digging his nails in. "F-Fantastic-" He grins. "Fucking f̵a̴n̴t̴a̵s̷t̸i̵c̷~! And… and stabby- I feel stabby." Byte laughs more and looks at Anti with those wide glitching eyes, grinning like a maniac. "Can I stab you? I w-w-wanna see you b̷͚̂l̴̢̇é̷̠e̶̓͜é̸̯d̸͕͘d̴̞̑."

"Ha! Unfortunately, I don't bleed at all, despite this whole thing." Anti indicates the neck wound. "But we can go out into the city and find someone who will." His smile widens into an excited grin. He seems unfazed by Byte grabbing his arm, even as the nails dig in. He glances at Magnificent. "Guessing that sort of comment isn't normal, then?"

"Not at all." Magnificent replies, impressed.

"Can I bite them?!" Byte says excitedly, baring his teeth in a sharp grin. "That's what my name is now, right? B̵I̷t̶e̸!̸ ̵!" He snaps his teeth together like a playful predator, giggling.

"You can," Anti assured him. "Let me just find someone suitable. This will only take one second." He turned into black static and zipped away--and then, exactly one second later, he returned. "Well… I just saw something very interesting." He looked over at Magnificent. "A puppet who snapped his strings. My Chase is out wandering around. It must be some sort of trap, I caught a couple glimpses of people nearby. They must've thought they were hiding with that magician's invisibility spell, not knowing that some cameras can see through that." And back to Byte, grinning. "We can head out right now."

"C̸h̵a̴s̵e̷!̷ I know a Chase!" Byte says excitedly. "If there's twooo Chases- can I kill one, Anti?" He giggles. As he does, he's still glitching a bit in place- his normally bright green and blue glitches now darker and corrupted. Even his magic seems corrupted as he opens his hand up and summons one of his magic knives. It buzzes and fizzles with loud static and flickers between dark green, blue, red and black.

Magnificent chuckles, "That's true… that could mean our Chase is somewhere in there too. No doubt hoping to catch us off guard."

"Or! He can come back too! Two Chases! Two puppets~!" Byte laughs, bouncing on his toes.

"Two would be nice," Anti says thoughtfully. "But if it really comes down to it, you can kill the spare--the one not from this world. As well as anyone else with him."

The spirals in Byte's eyes pulse a bit at this, as if sealing in a command and he grins. "I can kill him. It will be fun to kill him~! And the others! Anyone I can!!"

"Oh this will be quite the show~!" Magnificent laughs, "My puppets wont know what's hitting them."

Anti flashes a smile. "Lovely knives."

"Thank you Anti!" Byte beams. He throws one knife out of his hand and lets its sink into the wall- then opens back up his hand and it flies back in a similar arc. He giggles. "They're m̸a̵g̶i̷c̵~̷" He then poofs them away and glitches around the room like he just can't keep still. "Can we go?!"

"We can go right now," Anti says. "I need Voice, but we can meet him at the exit. Hmm, I should probably take Error, too, just in case." He looks at Magnificent. "Want to join? The four of us together can probably defeat them all."

"Oh, my friend, I wouldn't miss this for the world." Magnificent chuckles.

Byte glitches to a stop, his hair spiking and curling slightly as electricity courses across it and his clothes. He grins wide. "I'll follow you! I still don't know how the Place works-" He says plainly but even that sounds a bit crazy and unhinged. Maybe its that wild look in his glitching eyes. He then blinks and looks to a certain corner and then points. "And what are we gonna do with Jack? He's watching."

Magnificent looks confused, frowning at the space and not seeing anything. "…what are you talking about…?"

Anti stiffens. "He's what?" he whispers, absolute venom dripping in his voice, thick enough to burn ears.

Jack has been watching everything. He'd wanted to reach out to Alt, to support him during Anti's attempts to corrupt him, to remind him that he's not alone. But then Magnificent had walked in and thrown him for a loop, and before he could recover, that spiral the magician conjured was blocking Alt's vision. He wanted to shout, to scream, but the moment the process started he froze up. It wasn't just Alt in that chair, it was Jackie, Jameson, Henrik, Marvin, Chase--all of them. All of his friends he couldn't help. All of his friends that he had watched get hurt and tortured and twisted beyond recognition and never been able to do a single thing about. The memory of helplessness locked him up, shoving him back into that mentality until it was too late.

Anti turns in the direction Alt was pointing and lunges forward.

Jack yelps, briefly flickering into view, and dives out of the way.

"Get b̵̨a̛ç̛k̕ ̸͠h͡e͟͠r̢͟ę̴̕!" Anti shouts, picking up a blade from the nearest table and throwing it.

Jack dodges it and jumps through the wall, disappearing.

Anti screeches animalistically--then glances at Magnificent and gets himself under control. "I'll… deal with him… some other time," he says through gritted teeth. "He can't be touched. He's just like a fucking ghost. Not important right now. Let's go. He's probably going to tell the group we're on the way."

Byte staggers back, fear flickering in his eyes. As Anti shouts and screeches, he curls up slightly- afraid of his rage.

Magnificent raises an eyebrow and then laughs, "Sore spot, I'm assuming?" He sees Byte cowering and grabs him by the arm and throws him forward. "No time to waste, Byte. You want your blood, don't you?"

"y…yes. Yeah I- let's go." Byte says a bit dazedly. He glances at Anti warily.

Anti takes a deep breath. He notices Byte's fear, and for a moment, regret flickers in his eyes. But it's only for a second. There are more important things to focus on. "Sore spot indeed," Anti says as he walks to the door. He opens it up and heads out. "Come on. We'd best hurry."

[danstupidaushit]

Horrorswap (Mine and Flambe’s Take)

Horrorswap has the obvious idea of swapping most of the main characters with roles that we could find appropriate, so some characters don't fully swap like they would do in original underswap I feel like hunger also isn't much of the main problem here, but the desperation to be the "chosens" by alphys, and by that i mean, the ones that are gonna receive new rations such as water, food and even energy, as alphys basically has control over everyone and everything in the underground by now, so she restricts a lot of stuff such as core energy, food, water and etc.

onto the characters haha

Ollie: just as before, he was a bully that was gonna push aliza down into the hole like in original horrortale, but this time he ended up falling by accident as aliza actually tried to fight back (funny cos he was the least interested on messing with aliza lol) he's unempathetic, he gets easily annoyed to the point of having anger problems and aint that up to make new friends, leaving him in a genocide-neutral route, in parallel of aliza's pacifist-neutral one

Temmie: them and the other temmies ended up moving into the ruins after the extreme amount of trash that was being clogged into the waterfalls from, well, waterfall lol, flooding up the place and shit their village is sorta similar to the original one, having the temmies act exactly the same way like they do in undertale aside from the shop temmie, that seems more scared than the others after they encounter with ollie they all start following him along his journey, either by straight up walking behind him or just appearing in random places close to where ollie is they all end up dying one by one also, with only the shop temmie finishing up last by Ollie's side they're the only friend Ollie makes in the whole lore

Trembling: temmie slowly gets corrupted over time the other temmies die and other situations happen with both them and Ollie, in the end becoming so depressed and hopeless they turn into this suffering creature what have you done you could've saved them

it's trembling

Mettaton: after the incident with Alphys, mettaton ended up heavily modified so he could be repurposed for Alphys needs, mostly in hunting or searching missions Mettaton's mind was also heavily re-coded and he nows believe that for them to achieve fame, they have to help Alphys on her experiments at all costs, even if it means killing themselves for it She's meant to replace both napstablook and toriel in the ruins sections, as they will in some situations play around with Ollie instead of straight up capturing them, fairly resembling their original self

Flowey: After being killed by frisk in the neutral run, they had sometime to look out on how the underground was going while he still couldn't regrow, and after seeing how much violent this whole world was becoming he decided to regrow into a more fatal form, throwing away all the stealth he had to be as lethal as possible Still scared by what the world has become, he has decided to hide himself inside toriel's abandoned house, where may you ask? i don't know, no one knows

Papyrus: After being dismissed from the royal guard by unknown reasons by Alphys, he decided to let go off all the human hunting thing and work with something else that he had as a choice, a messenger, pretty much like a postman but a bit more, arcaic, he runs up and down the underground and is the voice of Alphys when she doesn't come out in public After encountering Ollie he decides that he should help him and guard him over snowdin, as the monsters from the city are specially the most aggressive in terms of humans, leading papyrus to get beaten up a few times by them, those times left a mark on paps which makes him sometimes have panic attacks, with his face displaying sunken eyes inside his eye-sockets, previously his funny googly eyes he still leaves Ollie, but mostly because Ollie takes the chance paps and sans are fighting again to run off to waterfall (felt like paps still managing to handle Ollie's situation not mattering what felt a bit more fitting than him losing it after a while)

Sans: Sans has a similar story from the horrortale comic, undyne fights sans, busts his head open and steals his eye, but after he wakes up he suddenly sees himself getting shook by Alphys with her hands, tears rolling down her eyes as she yells "WHAT DID YOU DO!? WHY DID YOU KILL HER?!!", and after that, well, let's say Alphys decided to take a bit of revenge on sans for "killing Undyne" Sans was forced into torture and mind manipulation into the point of absolute submission for Alphys and her plans, forgetting about family or friends and only caring about "the freedom of the underground" as Alphys says He's extremely unempathetic and almost soulless, having to pretend everything is fine to papyrus whenever he comes around Snowdin, and also hold himself around Ollie to not straight up kill him when papyrus is also around he does not care about papyrus he does not care

Toriel: She tried to come back again to the throne after the first time, knowing what the heck was happening with Alphys and her ways of "taking care of the kingdom", but as Alphys basically had control over everyone in the Royal Guard, Toriel received an even worse punishment, being locked in the dark catacombs from Asgore's castle (does that count as her replacing Asgore? i mean, she kinda is in his castle and shiz)

Napstablook: he kinda just, roams the abandoned places from the whole underground by now, kinda doing a parallel on how mettaton just pops in between your journey from time to time while you're on hotland, he has become transparent, doesn't speak and apparently cannot express his emotions anymore, but

he's sad

Alphys: She wasn't the one to have the idea for removing sans eye in this place, and just tried to help her up after she already showed up with sans eye on her hands, yet that little help Undyne forced Alphys to do left a scar on her, a scar that would change her mindset for the rest of his tale The experiment failed, the eye didn't accept the new body it was into, and ended up exploding by becoming too unstable inside of Undyne's head, exploding her head to shreds before she was dusted, all of that happening right in front of Alphys After that she strongly believed that it was Sans fault for that to happen, for not helping Undyne when she demanded to, for making her go to such atrocious levels just to try to help the underground, how egostical of him At that point, she changed, after changing sans for... her liking, she took the role of queen and began doing her own changes for the underground, taking control over everything, and beginning with her ambitious experiments to try and free the monsters but even after changing so much, her face is still burnt in her mind her face

[gibbywibbington]

Besides being unwillingly distracted from you by the same relentless stalkers & the sober house madness (ppl attempting suicide, etc) ….

I continue to wonder what’s the reason behind the red dragon skull/head helmet (on u) “shooting” & killing the red cyborg thingy during that lil performance on stage. I mean, I get the killing of a nasty beings et cetera… However, the helmet was red. It looked like a red dragon killing the red wired cyborg on the left. Them both being red. Twas n still am curious about that. Then later, the white helmet was worn. Curious about the significance of that. I have my guesses.. but you know me, I need to be sure. It’s just me needing to be sure, im not the masses, so it’s okay to hinty sumpfin to maeee. Thatd be great. I’m not the red dragon, as we know. The other cyborg on the other side look like it got corrupted w some of the red cyborgs madness. Apparently that was aight. I kind of agree. It’s kinda needed aint it. Both sides hafta be united. Craziness is needed, to an extent. Anyhuu…. The planet cgi thingy (good va bad) i had a similar thing going on in my head while listening to a random song tht made me think of that senario, like 9mnths ago. Even before you did that. So that was fkn cool seeing that..but ill explain that bit later in another message how about what I was picturing in my head for that. I think you’re going to enjoy it. Are we the same person? This is getting weird.

So..crazy (seriously needed) life update from mae to yeww: 

 So I still have those stalkers, stalking me, they stalked me the entire nine months I was at the sober house. Stalking me for over a year and a half. This is an every day thing. Not a day off they give me. They’re that demented and obsessed. No, I’m not schizophrenic. I honestly wish I was at this time. Because what they’ve been doing is far too extensive for comfort. One of them HAS to be very tech savvy because the sum of the shit that they do to me every day. I don’t even know how it’s possible to be doing the shit they are doing, without getting caught.  Either one to bother the hell out of me because I called the cops on them for threatening me with a gun but I mean come on obviously I’m gonna call the cops on em for threatening me with a gun

they fucking suck donkey dick for doing that and I’m not scared of anybody. I think they hate me because I’m not scared . My crazy ass isn’t even scared to die and they don’t understand that, and I don’t understand them for not understanding that, but yet here they are trying to scare me every day still after a year and a half, so I just laugh at them . Like psychotic laughter that I have never heard come outta myself in my life.

But I like that. It’s good. The only good thing about it.

 This stalker group of guys/gals barely even sleep. Dood, it’s fkn weird. At some point I thought they were on crack or something and I started calling them crackheads because I don’t know what the fuck is going on w that lol, like they never sleep…it’s weird. I don’t know if they want me to join their Orgy or something, they kept calling me the fourth. I have no idea what that means, still. But I feel like there’s not enough girls for the guys so maybe that’s what that means. No idea. One of the guys there has a SERIOUS, rare, physically sexual problem where he legit cannot stop having sex. It’s fucking weird and they send me recordings through the day of this guy having serious problems. It gets to a point ..when he comes, it literally sounds like he’s about to die because he can’t do it anymore, however he can’t stop. I told these people that they need to get him therapy instead of encouraging this behaviour, because seriously he’s probably going to die. I am smiling while speak typing this, cuz it weird but uhh it really isn’t funny. If he’s on Viagra or something he needs to fucking seriously stop that shit. Also, I am not going to help his problem in any shape or form. So if that’s one of the reasons why they’re stalking me, they need to REALLY give up. Maybe they “chose” me to complete their disgustingly bizarre non stop orgy. Which they oddly want me to hear the noises of, and sending that to me by different means. Like…WHAAAT?! I wonder what kind of meds or drugs they are on to stay up for as long as they do. By the way these people are pretty young from early twenties to late 20s and I’m just like I’m old, leave me alone but they don’t. The person who lived across from them told me some stuff about their ages, etc. cuz she’s a snoop.

This is ONGOING. As in like, it nvr stops. Daily, it’s always something. Something is possessing them to not give up or even LETup for a single day. I am so surprised I have not yet had a fucking psychotic breakdown . I must be 100 times more mentally strong than I had any self awareness of. I hate it. I didn’t need to find out.

They ALL or ONE of them, is THAT obsessed with me that they cant let go. I just don’t get it. I have no idea why any person on this planet would want to stalk my crazy, highly dishevelled ass. I’ve asked for a reason why, I have asked what the endgame is….nada. They don’t tell me anything worth listening to. They’re nuts and saying things like “you want the gloops?” probably repeating it a thou times. I don’t know why they want me to have their “gloops“ which means a load of cum. Not sure.. it’s been extensive I have my guesses, but dunno for sure.



I dunno how I’ve hidden this for this long .Almost ten months DEAD SOBER (kill me) after being stalked for nearly a full yr BEFO me being dead sober, continuing this shit during EVERY php class. To f w me. It lasted for five months (php itself).

Add in the Chris (my dearly departed CWISTOPPAH) unnecessary dying next to me memories, n shit. No good. I was the last person to c him besides the cop that put him in his cell. After life turned upside down, losing gibby, etc etc, STILL dealin w their shit on a daily basis, that I had to hide from everyone. Unfortunately for me these people are a very tech savvy and some of the shit they do to follow me is absolutely ridiculous. I didn’t even think some or any of this shit is technologically/scientifically possible. Apparently it is and I’m not very happy for finding that out. I could’ve gone throughout my entire life VERY happily not nowing any of this was possible.

IF they weren’t such fucking ass wipes, I might…no, I definitely would’ve been impressed. But they decided to piss me off instead. Another mistake they made. Srsly you/anyone (if any single person actually knew what I’ve been dealing w here tech wise) yall would tell me to go into acting because of how good i have hidden this shit. So crazy extensive this tech based stalking has been. Does Elon have some like alien encryption style thangy thangs I could aquire? Cuz uhh, they are QUITE on my ass, unrelenting.

Yup, these are the same people that were stomping on my ceiling almost a year ago (to get my attention?) .. they have yet to tell me the reason for the stomping. It’s been a year and a half and they still won’t tell me why they were stomping. Actually, they don’t tell me anything that I ask them. They threatened to shoot me in the head with a gun, even though I think it might be a joke because they’re obsessed with me?. They are also obsessed with trying to scare me because I don’t get scared very easily. That oddly bothers them. I just get angry and enraged and they don’t understand . They are in their 20s so of course they’re not going to understand a hell of a lot of shit, period. Bahaa

But then I had to do some brain digging and realised something weird. I don’t know.. Though, one of the shitty things (you would think this is good ,but it’s not) , one of the people involved is someone I told them I thought was hot. Cuz I saw this dude in a doorway and he was acting weird. Let me explain. One of the guys that were that was shouting at me disappeared and it was only the two girls at the time so when I went back to the apartment, his voice was no longer shouting at me and there was some silent dude at the door who looked as if he was there just to open the door for me. he also wasn’t looking at me and you could tell he was doing it deliberately. Which made it even more obvious, not less obvious. They thought it was going to do, I guess. He had his phone in front of him which wasn’t even on because I looked for a millisecond And his eyes were so far down that they were almost closed so like this is the weirdest millisecond of interaction with another human being I’ve ever had in my life dude had some weird ass. Like as if he knew who I was but I had no idea who the fuck he was. Which then made me think, maybe I do know this person because that was fucking weird as shit, and humans don’t act like that. so stuck in my head and then they kept giving me little weird hints here and there. Which ended up w me thinking that dude might actually be one of the kids that lived on old parish Lane back in the day, but they won’t tell me because they won’t tell me anything. So now they’re using that against me, using that reason to stay even longer to bug me even longer/more. However, I had no idea at the time when I told them, that he was/is possibly one of the stalker bunch. If im right, if it’s that lil kid that lived on my old street doing this… CRAZY. In the very beginning they kept saying oh he’s known you since he was seven or eight. I thought they were lying. But in fact, if that is the correct person then that makes perfect sense because that’s how old he was. Soo…. Uhh yea.

Kill me now(not really tho) i just want to go to fantasia n dissafukkinpear

[theitalianmafia]

what if I just hit you with a #5 for uncommon OC asks for all of who you listed >:3c I wanna know

alrighty here we go!

How easy is it to earn their mistrust?

--

Fiona: She's extremely forgiving and understanding, but if you show blatant disregard for the well being of others she aint gonna trust you. Or if you're Naoise.

She generally believes that trust needs to be given in order for it to be reciprocated, and will give people the benefit of the doubt most of the time unless they have proven otherwise.

--

Archibald: My man is smart enough to be a Problem and doesn't exactly trust anyone. He's deeply curious about people and things though, making him the kind of person to be cordial to get close, but is always ready to fucking burn that bridge at the most opportune moment if he gets some bad vibes.

He also kinda has an innate sense of when things are just kinda Wrong in terms of nature. Like he laid eyes on a corrupted sidhe once, never having seen one before and was like "lol time to kill" much to Naoise's displeasure. Deeply curious about things that are supposed to be there, very much "learn what you can and kill asap" with things that shouldn't be. Is that good? sometimes, but your brain has some natural protections from your immune system for a reason.

Long story short? He can seem to be fine with someone, then turn on what seems to be a dime. Constantly in a state of evaluating the world. Many thoughts head full, will never let you know.

--

Deidra: if u fuck up once she will not trust u with the same task again. Uncomplicated. Elegant. She's in charge.

--

Xolia (star wars version): She's 200 years old, has a lot of perspective. Relaxed but generally on-guard, like how u are at the walmart. Has learned a lot of hard lessons about trust, being the object of mistrust herself (rightfully so). She tries to be forgiving, since she was offered forgiveness and a second chance. Friends are more valuable than enemies.

--

Oliarth: golden retriever. puppy dog man. He's the one that took in Xolia, a whole sith lord, when she came to the Jedi for help. He will be your friend. Wants to trust so so bad.

[fan-kingdoms]

WHOO BOY. episodes 13 and 14 FINISHED and i am HERE with a LEGITIMATE BULLET-POINTED/NUMBERED LIST. mostly about ep 14 cuz i kinda already gave my thoughts on ep 13 in my reply to the last ask but there'll probably be some of that in there too.

okay first off. I LOVE TEN!!! what little ive seen of him anyway. funky little guy! the same and yet so very different and all the more fascinating for it! i will forever miss nine but i think im gonna have a SWELL time with ten. just absolutely glorious

i especially love how the entire time ten's in his festive little coma rose is just pissed and sad as hell and all like "the REAL doctor wouldnt DO THIS" but then the second he wakes up shes back to being all 😏😍🥰. girlie you are NOT subtle. (poor mickie tho <//3 boy does not DESERVE this)

also !!! love ten having his whole big sassy showdown with the sycorax while wearing pajamas striped in the trans pride colors. absolute slay you funky little space man

ogh i can already tell im about to have so many emotions about ten and rose. nine was at least somewhat more subtle but HOLY HELL ten. the heart eyes are insane my guy

im pretty sure captain jack is coming back at some point cuz i saw stuff of him with ten and rose before i got interested in watching the show. so like where is he. how do they get him back from satellite five i mean they thought he was DEAD so hes just stranded there. do they just decide to go back and check one day and pick him up. wh

TIME VORTEX ROSE. HOLY SHIT. THAT WAS SO BADASS AND SCARY AND HAUNTINGLY BEAUTIFUL AND. YEAH. AND THE FJFICNFING KIS,,,,, NINE TAKING THE VORTEX FROM HER AND DYING IN HER PLACE,,,, OUGH MAN. I GOT EMOTIONS

ik i aint seen thr last of the daleks. you resourceful little fuckers. ugh

harriet jones i had faith in you. i LIKED you. help i just read my own text in nine's voice (sidenote: ten's anger at her when she just,, killed the sycorax even though they were already leaving,, the COLDNESS in his voice. yeah thats the doctor right there 100% and MAN i love him.)

i think thats all for now but ill probably remember more stuff and come to scream about it in the morning

OOO A LIST I LOVE A LIST!!

(i figured out how to put a read more in an ask !! finally !!)

i’m so glad you like ten and i love that we can tell david is just having a swell time playing our favorite space man he is Vibing and just enjoying himself and it’s so fun to see— and oh yeah neither of them are subtle! you see most people agree that ten was literally born out of love, he’s so much more vulnerable and forgiving of himself because rose let him see himself, and he sacrificed nine for her so ten could freely love her. my HEART.

and oh yeah both jack and the daleks are slippery little fuckers they have a habit of making it out of places

TIME VORTEX. BAD WOLF. SHE IS THE BAD WOLF AND SHE CREATES HERSELF!!! ITS A PARADOX AND ITS SO COOL HOW SHE JUST PUTS THE WORDS EVERYWHERE HOPING ROSE WILL FOLLOW THEM THERE

I LOVE HARRIET’S CHARACTER BECAUSE IT REALLY SHOWS HOW PEOPLE CHANGE OVER TIME AND THE CORRUPTING POTENTIAL OF POWER UGH ITS SO GOOD

[elvesofnoldor]

gandalf: i must see the head of my order about it [the one ring]. he is very powerful and wise. 

me, knowing damn well he’s talking about manwe: 

[questionablepastries]

soulsborne ask 8, 14, 30(also happy late birthday!!! how did i miss it!!!)

ASH!!!!! IM ANSWERINGN SO LATE forgib meh (also THank you for the belated birthday wish YAYAYA <3 )

I wanted to answer this on pc, bc i intended to write a lot given that this is like one of my top favorite franchises and it altered my brain chemistry permanently; aint no way im writing no sorry ass short answer so its gonna go under a readmore :)

8. What are your 3 favorite areas and why?

ough this ones already tough, throughout all the games there are so many good areas lol. I had to write a large list of areas I love and finally managed to narrow it down to three it was super painful and took like 30 min but here they are (in no particular order)

Fountainhead palace from sekiro - probably the most serene location in all soulsborne personally, The music is very peaceful the area is GORGEOUS compared to the bloodbath of the rest of the game. It very much is its own isolated location because technically it is. the royalty in sekiro would seclude themselves in this location and do nothing but ignore the state of the rest of the world and it very much shows since the area is so serene with its cherry blossom trees and massive koi fish to feed. even though the area has since flooded and all the servants turned into fish people hybrids its still awesome to explore what is essentially abandoned royalty temple ruins

Nokstella eternal city from eldenring - the area is just super pretty as well! sorry its starting to sound redundant but unlike fountainhead palace this place is not meant for normal people much less royalty to access and yet its a fucking cinderella castle underground complete with stars and shit, plus everything here is like weird mercury magic and has all these mimics its AWESOME i love doppelgangers and i love the scary silent atmosphere here because its like what did these people DO to get themselves banished underground

Tower of latria/upper latria from demon souls, i chose this one because i think it caused me the most stress in my demon souls run. it was here that i was getting very lost and very scared - probably the most stressed ive ever been my entire demon souls run. going from super scary prison to jesus christ is that a giant fucking beating heart being held up by chains was an experience ill never feel again it was so cool

honorable mentions go to: caelid, lake of rot, crumbling farum azula, academy of raya lucaria (elden ring), the gutter, black gulch, and shrine of amana (ds2), the entirety of shrine of storms (demon souls), nightmare of mensis (bloodborne)

i feel bad not even mentioning one ds3 map so uhhh profaned capital

14. Who is the most underrated boss in your opinion?

leechmonger & adjudicator (yes i chose two, im cheating) from demon souls. I think soulsborne games should lean way more into body horror/horror themes in general given how crappy the state of their worlds are and these guy are like. the definition of both body horror and gore. sad to see both of them being ignored for fan favorite cool people in armor bosses (artorias, ornstein, gwyn, lady maria, malenia, old king allant, soul of cinder, nameless king...etc)

bosses that get this horror thing right include: ludwig, orphan of kos, guardian ape (not exactly underrated but the second phase tho), radahn (he was eating a guy at the start lol he counts as horror in a way? plus he's massive), mergos wetnurse, king allant (the real one!), phalanx (god i love this thing), flamelurker, maneaters, four kings (warped by dark magic and infinitely respawning in an abyss this is the coolest concept of all time), gaping dragon (COOL!!!!), demon of song are a couple i can list with google's help

off topic but my favorite "just a guy" bosses are penetrator (demon souls), looking glass knight + darklurker (ds2) and the corrupted monk from sekiro

30. Rank the games you’ve played!

wahhh......

dark souls 1 (my entry to the franchise im sowwy)

demon souls (really captured the scary morose medieval knight atmosphere i was desperately craving after finishing ds1)

bloodborne (super unique game - has no peer in terms of atmosphere, is only in third place because i much prefer being a depressing knight rather than a cool guy in a trenchcoat on a weekday in london)

eldenring (being unable to ride torrent in the final boss fight, the dissapointment of lack of things to do at the mountaintop of the giants, and no boss living up to radahn or rykard in the end game stretch..(malenia is just a hot lady im sorry; even her second form is just hot lady - now if she was a monster.....) is why im placing this as 4th)

sekiro (another unique game however has zero replayability)

dark souls 3 (might be overdue for a replay since i only beat it like twice since release, and i struggled to remember any bosses or areas when answering these questions. I think ds3 was just like a bunch of references to ds1, however gael one of THE most memorable bosses for me and was a grand way to end the franchise)

dark souls 2 (granted i only played vanilla upon release only once and it left a bad taste in my mouth to the point that i was concerned about the state of the franchise after i finished it because while i knew the main team was working on bloodborne while this was being developed it made me wonder if id ever experience what i felt in ds1 ever again.

[cryptvokeeper]

long post press J to skip cuz I dont wanna put it under a read more (sorry mobile users)

Crimson-corrupted techno refuses to leave my brain so maybe if I get it written down it'll finally let me go to sleep so consider:

bad spinning it for techno as the eggpire not really being a government, technically, because it's not trying to make any laws or enforce any rules, it just wants everyone to listen to the egg and that's fine, right? The egg’s just friendly, is all. Totally different. And techno's always been one to justify his actions even to the point of contradiction, so his bloodvine-infected state would be perfectly susceptible to this sorta manipulation.

techno with the red drained out of his skin/clothes/cape. I dunno how the vines affect pink but for you pink-haired techno enthusiasts white-haired techno has POTENTIAL

If he was trapped like Sam was, techno would have to give up all his cool gear and stuff to the egg. God once again nerfing techno by having someone take his shit (but also techno having to give up the axe Ranboo made him OH NO-)

Speaking of Ranboo unless I've missed anything, which is possible because no one knows pacing in this house, Ranboo is the only one of the antarctic gang so far to actually know abt the eggpire, so he’d be the point of connection to all this. Maybe he’s the one who brought up that some people were making a new government and techno went to investigate. Next thing you know Techno is coming home but he’s... off, somehow, and red vines start appearing in his basement (bonus Ranboo guilt pog)

if techno joined the eggpire it would mark the first time he and Philza would not only be on opposite sides but legitimately opposed to one another. Imagine the fuckin potential of the Blood god and the angel of death having a fight but also the angst of phil and techno having to fight each other.

If Niki gets in on the anarchy squad you bet your ass she’s gonna help save him. Which means Puffy could get involved and here’s how Puffychu can still win and be on the same side-

also if puffy got involved Tommy could get involved but shhhh thats my innit favoritism showing and this post aint abt him

And now some aftermath stuff for if they were able to un-egg techno: first off some new added trauma because this is techno’s issue with being used and not treated as a person with autonomy cranked up to eleven because he was LITERALLY being controlled so theres some more angst. have fun dealing with that pig boy.

I mentioned techno not being able to hear the voices while under the egg’s influence and would like to extend that to once he’s un-egged he still doesnt have them for a while. They never really left, they were just blocked by the egg’s influence, and after some time recovering he’s able to hear them again but for a while It’s too quiet in his head and he always thought it would be better without the voices but he hates it. sometimes during his recovery, he even misses hearing the egg, because it was an evil supernatural entity, but at least it was something. Anyway eventually he hears a single voice and is overjoyed and starts having a conversation with it, not caring who’s around to hear, and after that the rest slowly start to trickle back.

This one really only works if the egg full-on took over him and he had no memory of being controlled but like, I had this really specific scene in my head of Techno after some recovery time trying to train, feeling like he has to get back to work and catch up for lost time and discovering that his skills...havent actually diminished at all. he’s still as sharp as ever, he has as many supplies as ever, if not more because he was supplying the eggpire too, and this leads to a bit of a crisis for him because he realizes this means he’s been fighting the whole time without any knowledge of who he fought or for what cause and that is the nightmare scenario friends. cue hurt/comfort babey

Techno🤝being scared of the gap in your memory where you did some bad shit🤝Ranboo

but like honestly I dont even like full-on blacked-out mind control as much as a version where techno was aware of everything happening, just in a heavily manipulated state of mind. because thats a way more complicated and compelling dynamic that shows that no one is immune to manipulation and indoctrination and shit, no matter how strong they think they may be. and it preys on c!techno’s existing issues and potential weaknesses. and thats fuckin rad.

Techno🤝having a complicated relationship with the godlike entity that isolated you from your loved ones, emotionally/mentally manipulated you and made you give up your stuff🤝Tommy

But regardless Techno like actually regretting his actions?? feeling bad for what he did while under the egg’s control and trying to make amends with those he hurt?? Can you imagine???

[second-chance-stray]

(Split Ends) RP Log: Rising and Riylli catch Cravs up to her usual shit

(Cravendy Hound) It’s a day like any other, and as usual, there’s a buzz of activity at the market stalls in Old Gridania. Here, gil-strapped locals and wealthy tourists browse the forest’s wares, from Fen-Yll Fineries to freshly picked herbs. Maybe you’re here to pick up groceries, or simply passing through?

(Riylli Aliapoh) "There, was that really so hard?" Riylli chided the Roegadyn as they entered the market stalls, trying hard to ignore the feeling of eyes on her.

(Rising Lotus) Rising seemed more concerned about eating some jerky she had gotten from a Thanalan vender hucking their wears. "I guess, made me get out here an' buy this so it wasn't all bad." she glanced at her snack, then to Riylli, smirking. "I'd offer you some, but after bar night I know you have /such fancy miqo'te tastes/." she snickered as she took another bite.

(Riylli Aliapoh) Riylli glared up at the woman. "Just 'cuz I didn't wanna eat your sugar corrupted cookies doesn't mean I'm a picky eater... And I even gave you jerky on that trip too! You owe me for savin' your life from woodsin, now gimme some!"

(Rising Lotus) "Yeah well you were an arse about it, an' even the crazy lady..err Kaede, liked 'em. And Haila an' she ain't crazy." she took another bite "Plus we're even for that for me draggin' ya along on that trip in the first place!"

(Cravendy Hound) In the middle of your conversation, your eyes catch movement - a brown cloaked traveler, hustling northwards towards the Lancer’s guild. The wind picks up, blowing the traveler’s hood partially off for a second, revealing telltale green locks, twisted and ragged like a certain somebody’s. There aren’t many seawolves in Gridania, and only one with such “style.”

(Riylli Aliapoh) "You wouldn'ta even been able to go in the volcano without my help! 'drag me along' my ass, you should be payin' me for that too!" She whines, before her attention is grabbed elsewhere. "...Cravs? Oy, Cravs!" Riylli called out, grinning as she waved over to the seawolf

(Rising Lotus) "What do you mean? I didn't need your spell at all, I was usin' the gear I had!" she did a double take on the woman passing by, squinting her eyes as she looked before Riylli started shouting to her. She took the opportunity to stash her snack away. "Is that Cravs?" she wanted to get a look at her face before she shouted at perhaps a stranger.

(Cravendy Hound) The traveler tugs the fabric back over their head, shoulders stiffening upon hearing Riylli call out. In response, they pick up the pace, moving in a zigzagging pattern as if to lose any would-be-followers. Upon reaching the Westshore Pier, they would push off from the dock, bound for the East Shroud.

(Riylli Aliapoh) Riylli blinked. "...What? Is she ignorin' us..?" She asked, turning to her Roegadyn companion.

(Riylli Aliapoh) "Did you ever manage to talk to her after that whole incident with Baldur?"

(Rising Lotus) "Maybe it wasn't her? Sure some stranger would be put off from jus' yellin' at 'em." she watched their boat go off through the water. "...sort of, not much about the whole thing though... do you think we should follow them..? In case it is her?" she shrugged "It is sorta weird they bolted when you called her name, that does seem like a Cravs thing to do."

(Riylli Aliapoh) "'Course it was her! She had the exact same scent after all, salt and booze. Lets go after her, I still gotta yell at her for ditchin' us!" She insisted, taking off towards the docks before even allowing Rising to try and argue

(Rising Lotus) sighing she hurried after Riylli toward the docks. "..Hey what do I smell like?"

(Riylli Aliapoh) "You smell like that Korporkkur thing. You two sleep together or somethin'?"

(Rising Lotus) "Sometimes, he's my pet afterall. He tends to wander off back to his pool though."

(Cravendy Hound) Tracking the traveler brings you to an odd and dangerous place - The Sylphlands. It’s not somewhere someone would simply wander into, and they’re making a beeline towards the place. Once in Sylph territory, they tread slowly through the brush, careful to avoid any patrols or aggressive wildlife. Finally, at a dim and wet clearing populated by massive Dreamtoads, they stop.

(Riylli Aliapoh) "...The hells is she doin' here..? Doesn't she know how dangerous this place is? I don't care if we've got a truce goin' on, the sylph aint to be trusted..."

(Rising Lotus) "This place smells weird. An' I ain't talked to many, but they seem alright. Talk kinda funny an' all." like she was one to talk. "What the hells is she doin' way out here anyway? Some sort of job she ain't tellin' us about?"

(Riylli Aliapoh) "Try not to breathe in any weird gasses comin' outta plants... The sylphs here like to play tricks with your mind. They're like little kids with powerful magic and no conscience..."

(Cravendy Hound) The traveler pulls out their gun and stops. Suddenly paranoid, they whip back to check if there's anyone behind them. (You have a moment! Do you hide, or do something else?! :3)

(Rising Lotus) She glanced at Riylli but said nothing, keeping her distance from a strange looking mushroom.

(Rising Lotus) Seeing perhaps Cravs pull out her gun and dart around, she gripped Riylli by the back of her top and dragged her behind a weird purple tree...bush..thing. Such strange plants here. One of her hands quickly planted itself over Riylli's mouth as she used the other to try to steady her and keep her still. On the plus side, Riylli could smell how good her jerky was!

(Riylli Aliapoh) "Ack!-" Riylli was suddenly yanked back into the air like she was some sort of cat. Once they were safely behind the purple thingamajig, she shoved Rising's hand away from her mouth and gave her a furious glare. She did, however, stay silent, allowing the two of them to continue spying on the seawolf in peace

(Cravendy Hound) The traveler carefully scans the area, her gaze resting on the purple treebush for a long time. She takes a few cautious steps towards it.

(Cravendy Hound) (but isn't there yet)

(Riylli Aliapoh) Riylli slowly moves to place a hand on her staff behind her, pulling in just enough aether to pick up a rock behind Cravs and toss it in the opposite direction

(Rising Lotus) Rising was keeping still, giving Riylli an apologetic look while she stared daggers at Rising. She watched Riylli raise her staff, soon hearing the sound of something off in the distance, letting out a quiet sigh of relief.

(Cravendy Hound) The traveler turns quickly, gun trained on the rock. They stay frozen like this for a moment, then relaxes, grumbles something about Sylphs playing tricks on her mind. Get in, get out. They continue onwards, closing in on a particularly large dreamtoad.

(Riylli Aliapoh) The Miqo'te flashes Rising a thumbs up and an overly-proud grin before turning back to watch whatever it was Cravs had come all the way out here to do

(Rising Lotus) Rising returns the thumbs up, peeking her head around the plant along with Riylli, perfect size to lean over her while she spied!

(Cravendy Hound) Several shots ring out. When the dust settles, you see the Dreamtoad slumped against the ground. The traveler gets in close to...scrape ooze off of the toad? Seems like they’re gonna be at this for a while too, complaining all the while. Goddamn toad, goddamn Sylphs.

(Riylli Aliapoh) "She's... harvesting the ooze off of the dreamtoads..? No... Don't tell me..." Riylli suddenly stands, stepping out from behind the mushroom thing with her hands on her hips and a furious expression on her face. "Do NOT tell me you came ALL THE WAY out to here JUST to make your damn DRINKS stronger!" She roared angrily

(Rising Lotus) "Riylli wai-" she tried to to stop her in a hushed whisper before she screamed to let not only Cravs, but probably every trickster Slyph in the area know they were there. She was hunched over, looking a bit tense as if she should reveal herself or not.

(Cravendy Hound) "Bloody whoreson of a shit smellin', oversized piece of.....WAUH, WHA-WHa?!" The traveler turns to face Riylli, caught redhanded, tool still clenched tightly in both hands. "R-r-riylli?!"

(Riylli Aliapoh) The infuriated Miqo'te marches right up to Cravs, "Of course it's me! I know you heard me call out to ya in Gridania, how many times do I gotta teach you that ya can't escape me in MY territory!" She exclaimed, jabbing a finger into her belly accusingly. "You got any idea how dangerous it is to come out here alone!? Has your drinkin' habit really gotten this bad!?"

(Rising Lotus) Rising finally peeked out from behind her spot, shrugging as she looked at Cravs get told off by the lady nearly half her size. She kept close to the tree thing for now, she'd get some words in after the chewing out from Riylli.

(Cravendy Hound) "I don't see yer name written anywhere. No 'keep out' signs or nothin'!" That's a lie. There are plenty posted by Gridanian forces, just not from Riylli specifically. "And what're YE doin' 'ere, knowin' it's dangerous an' all?! Wait.." She backs up until she's up against the toad, hands feeling for something behind her. Her head snaps to Rising. "...Did ye both follow me?"

(Rising Lotus) "Uhh... sort of I 'spose?" she shrugged again, chuckling nervously. "We jus' thought it was odd you ran off from us...err if it was you..but I guess it was so it was odd!" she rubbed her hand from her forehead to the back of her head.

(Riylli Aliapoh) "Of course we followed you! You've been actin' weird lately, blowin' us off when we went to meet that Rot lady, not showin' up at Heartwood for days at a time... But if it was just so you could get drunk like this I feel stupid for worrying!" She huffed, thankfully no longer shouting at least

(Cravendy Hound) The jig is up. Cravs pulls her hood down, and there's a mixture of guilt, shock, and anger. She bites on the lower lip, the look of keeping a snarl back. "I...LOOK. I don't want ye both gettin' involved anymore. It was a mistake. It's my problem, and I'll deal with it my way, so sod off!"

(Rising Lotus) || floating nearby a Sylph drawn towards the sound of Riylli shouting giggled mischievously. With a twirl of they're hands, they sent a swirl of wind to the tree thing Rising was currently under, purple pollen suddenly raining upon her. She was just about to speak when it happened, inhaling a fair amount before sneezing twice. "Ugh, stupid tree..." she rubbed her nose. "Anyway...what's with the change of heart on the matter? You asked us for the help!"

(Riylli Aliapoh) Riylli frowns and crosses her arms, though her expression softens after a moment. "I recognize that look... Like the girls that get pulled into poachin' and banditry... You're in trouble aren't you? You dumbass... How many times do I gotta tell ya that were your friends! Just tell us whatever mess you got into and we'll help dammit!"

(Cravendy Hound) Cravs grabs and yanks something out of the downed Dreamtoad and keeps whatever it is tight in her fist. She shakes her head. "I'm bein' yer friend by tellin' ye both better off stopping while ye still can. Know me as a drunkard, hard stop. That'd be better...the best."

(Cravendy Hound) "Stupid of me to open up at all," she grumbles, and then looks at Rising.

(Riylli Aliapoh) Riylli frowned once more, though she began to look a lot more nervous now. She turned to glance behind her towards Rising for a brief moment as though she were considering something, before turning back with a small sigh. "You... Of all people, you should know I can't do something like that..." She mutters quietly, somewhat hoping Rising wouldn't be able to hear her

(Rising Lotus) Started walking toward the too, but things were getting..wiggly. She was a but unsteady in her movements, bringing her hands up to rub her eyes if maybe she had something in them. "We can...figure it out though...whoah..." as she pulled her hand down it left a trail of colors. "Any...anyway..you jus' gotta, trust us."

(Riylli Aliapoh) Riylli turns and finally realizes Rising had been dosed. She grits her teeth angrily, changing her demeanor back to normal. "You... I told you not to breathe that shite in dammit!"

(Cravendy Hound) Crav's hard expression softens, but she turns away before Riylli can see it happen. "Shit. I... Rising??" She approaches and offers her free hand for the other Roegadyn to lean on.

(Rising Lotus) "I didn't... try to.." she held her head as thing started spinning, trying her best to focus on Cravs. "Anyway..." she jolted back as it appeared to her that Cravs appeared before her in a near instant. Luckily she managed to grip her hand before she fell flat on her back. "...Ugh...we're friends right, we can figure it out..." she squinted at what she thought was Crav's face.

(Riylli Aliapoh) Riylli turns to try and help Rising as well, somewhat thankful for something to relieve the tension that had been growing. "It's probably not dangerous... But maybe we should take her back to Little Solace just in case..? They're nicer than the Sylphs out here, they'd probably have an antidote for whatever she got hit with."

(Cravendy Hound) "It's /cause/ we're friends that I did this alone." Cravs grumbles, and then nods at Riylli. With more effort than usual, she strains to heft Rising's body over her back, her passenger's arms linked around her neck.

(Riylli Aliapoh) Riylli grit her teeth but did not respond, attempting to help lift Rising as well only to quickly accept that that was not going to work. That only seemed to anger her more though. "...Were not done talking about this..." She mutters, avoiding the seawolf's eyes

(Rising Lotus) Rising had conceded to keep her eyes closed instead of dealing with the flash of colors and distorting imagines. As Cravs loaded her onto her back she let her guard slip though, eyes opening for a moment and then bolting open. "V-Violet..?" she was staring off into nothing, one of her hands reaching out briefly before weakly returning to Cravs, holding her tight. "...Let's jus' go already..."

(Rising Lotus) closed her eyes tightly after the hallucination, turning quite quiet after the strange incident.

(Cravendy Hound) Cravs winces, buckling sideways for a second, catches her balance and breath. Grits her teeth with effort, or perhaps with something else. There is plenty to be said, but first, it's off to Little Solace.

Bonus:

[gale-gentlepenguin]

Gale’s Top 10: Favorite Rivals

For this list, I will be picking my favorite Rival Character’s in Media. Video games, anime, manga, comics, etc.

Now the question is, What makes a character a rival?

For this list I will be making clarifications:

1. If one of the goals of one of the characters is to surpass another character, battle multiple times, state that this person is their rival, and/or have the same objective as a character but puts them in conflict.

2. Moral alignment doesn't mean anything. They can be friendly rivals or even hero/villain rivals as long as their main objective is to best their opponent.

3. Bonus points if the rival is equal in strength and find themselves on opposite sides.

4.There are differences between Archenemies and rivals. So likely Super villains, Like The Joker (who do exist to defeat batman, are more like nemesis rather then rivals).

5. One per franchise

_______________________________________________________________________

10. Dark Pit/ Pittwo ( Kid Icarus Uprising)

Dark Reflections are often seen as cliché when it comes to rivals, but I have a soft spot for this dark copy.

Dark Pit is a copy made by Pandora to be Pit’s equal and defeat him for the sake of the underworld. But the process of making him resulted in his obedience being... shattered.

Dark pit doesn't side with the underworld or Skyworld. He does his own thing and wants to be his own person. Even achieving unlimited flight for a brief period, making him superior to Pit.

Equal in strength, speed, power, and abilities. Dark pit is a pinnacle of dark copies. But he is even seen being more observant and smarter then Pit. Since he is more self reliant, he is shown to see things more objectively.

His connection to Pit is revealed that if Pit falls, He will fall as well. So it makes for an interesting dynamic that Dark pit wants to prove his superiority yet still bound to Pit. Which leads to an interesting dynamic.

(also if you have not played Kid Icarus Uprising, for the love of Palutena DO IT!)

9. Metal Sonic (Sonic the hedgehog)

Oh I can see the anger from the Shadow Fans. ‘Why did I pick Metal Sonic?’ ‘Why not Shadow?’ ‘Shadow and Sonic have more of a rivalry?’

Here is my response. Metal Sonic is Sonic’s greatest rival and vice versa.

Created by egg man to be Sonic’s equal, to learn and grow with each fight. Metal sonic always pushes Sonic to his limit.

There are even cases where Metal Sonic has Surpassed Sonic going so far as to have sonic need the help of others to best him.

His goal of defeating Sonic goes beyond programing. He will even find a way to break free of Eggman’s control just to achieve his goal of besting sonic.

Whether its the Comics, the games, movies. Metal Sonic is seen as Sonic’s most dangerous rival.

And proof? He is a character in the game Sonic Rivals! So that shows he is a rival of sonic.

Not to insult shadow, but the OG shadow wasn't focused on fighting sonic, he had his own goals and sonic just happened to be involved. While later renditions have him more of a vegeta knock off to sonic. I find these interpretations lame.

I also considered Scourge, but that would give acknowledgement to ken Penders and honestly I aint gonna do that.

_______________________________________________________________________

8. Sasuke Uchiha (Naruto/Naruto Shippuden)

Yes, cue the cliche gasps. Despite how obvious he was that he is on the list, it makes sense why he is here. His and Naruto’s dynamic is iconic. Best friends, rivals, enemies, brothers in arms.

The two went down two different paths, striving to surpass the other to achieve their dreams.

The main reason I put him on here is simple.

I could write several essays about why Sasuke is on this list, but that would be boring. You all know why he is here.

He is an iconic rival and that is a fact

_______________________________________________________________________

7. Kim Ban Phuong (Sun-Ken Rock)

Now I know what you are thinking. Who the f*** is this guy? Time for gale’s obscure pick.

And that is understandable, since this is a manga that wasn't made into an anime (despite DESERVING TO BE ONE) (though to be fair, it is MEGA DARK, a lot of messed up themes in this. Really nails how corrupt people can be)

A man that became a monster for the sake of surpassing Kitano Ken (the main character of the manga)

A man that was one of the only two people to have ever beaten the main character in a fight (and the only one to do so when the main character was trying to be a boss)

Formed an assassin guild to destroy Ken’s gang. 

The tragic backstory of this character is enough to give the reader the understanding on how he is Ken’s shadow. Why he is fighting against Ken so hard. All the way to the tragic end he faced. Something which I dare not spoil here.

The fight between him and Ken is nothing short of breath taking and this is written by the guy that did the Dr.Stone Manga.

Seriously, while the fan service can be grotesque at times, the plot of the story about Korean gangs, race relations and asian history are something to behold. The fact that its so underrated is a travesty. (but skip the idol arc, it does capture how messed up the entertainment industry can be.)

_______________________________________________________________________

6. Ryoga hibiki

The undisputed king of getting lost. The man of many misfortunes. The half piglet half man. Ryoga.

For those who have seen Ranma 1/2, What you see here is top tier best boy in the series.

If you go strictly by the anime, you would believe that he is a better match for akane (or Ranma depending on what side of the fandom you are on)

Ryoga puts Ranma as the focus of all the misfortune he has faced, he is mostly self taught and is acknowledged by Ranma as his only true rival.

When it comes down to it they are constantly on a seesaw on who is stronger. Despite all of the hardships, Ryoga does see Ranma in a friendlier light as the series goes on, even considering him a friend. They actually have helped each other on occasions, The manga showing times where Ranma tried to help Ryoga with his date with another girl. Or Ryoga putting his feelings for Akane aside to stop Brainwashed Ranma from marrying shampoo.

The back and forth between the two and the unspoken connection of having a jusenkyo curse has really made the two have a strong bond.

Ryoga deserves a spot on this list because of his strong character.

______________________________________________________________________

5. Henry Cooldown (No more Heroes)

For those of you unfamiliar with the series of No More Heroes, Henry is the Scottish Half-brother of the main protagonist. Cool, confident, a kick ass accent, and a masterclass assassin. He is the final boss of the first No More Heroes.

The rivalry between the two really takes head when the main character, Travis, finds out that this cool customer that stole his kill and saved his life was his half brother and wants to settle it in a duel to the death. Henry was a rival that was always one step ahead of Travis. Travis wants to bang Silvia, (the woman that set up the assassin ranking system) She was Henry’s Ex-wife. Travis wanted to be the number one assassin, Henry was the original number one. Travis has a beam Katana, Henry has one that looks even cooler.

In terms of the cool rival/ brother rival archetype, Henry Cooldown is the best fit, and he even helps travis out again in the sequel.

_______________________________________________________________________

4. Paul (Pokemon Diamond and Pearl)

For those of you that have seen the anime, You understand EXACTLY why Paul is on this list.

In Ash’s journey through Sinnoh, there was a Pokemon trainer that always seemed to one up Ash, no it wasn't Gary Oak, it was Paul.

But what made Paul so different? Why not pick Gary?

Paul was Ash’s antithesis.

Ash loved his Pokemon and battled with instinct and trust.

Paul evaluated his pokemon’s potential, he released any that failed to meet his standards. He was focused on attaining power and would use any means necessary to attain it.

He saw how his older brother failed, and refused to give up like his brother did. Paul wanted to prove himself better.

Ash saw Paul as a strong trainer but HATED the way he treated his own Pokemon. Ash even ended up asking Paul’s Chimchar to join his team after Paul abandoned it, which allows for a more dynamic clash in their beliefs.

Battle after battle, Paul kept proving better then ash, until the Sinnoh League tournament. Where they faced off in the quarter finals.

(Which is personally my favorite anime Pokemon battle of all time)

Ash gets to show Paul the importance of Loving and respecting one’s Pokemon. And that is pretty beautiful.

_______________________________________________________________________

3.Shego

Shall we talk about my favorite character in Kim possible? About time we had a lovely Lady rival on here.

Yes, we shall.

The former Super powered Hero turned Villain, the Number two of Dr. Drakken.

Shego is a self interested individual that loves to pamper herself and to do bad.

Whenever she is involved, it is guaranteed that she and Kim are going to be fighting.

The fights are always intense and always show the capabilities of both fighters. In a way Shego is a dark reflection of Kim.

Capable, sassy, fashionable, and a total threat to anyone that gets in her way.

Not to mention, (I TOTALLY WAS CRUSHING ON HER AS A KID)

Shego’s only reason for not being the most evil villain out there is simply because she couldn't care less about actually ruling the world, Not that she wouldn't do it if she had the opportunity (a stitch in time showed she totally would) She is just more relaxed, even willing to help Kim.

There is even an episode where Shego turned good and she and Kim got along legendarily.

When it comes to rivals, Shego’s got sass, class and can whoop ass.

______________________________________________________________________

2. Seto Kaiba (Yu-Gi-Oh!)

Don't act like you don't love this arrogant douche.

Seto Kaiba is one of the most iconic characters in Yu-gi-oh.

This Blue eyes dragon fetishist is the head of his own company and wants to prove that he is the greatest duelest in the world.

His obsession with besting the Pharaoh (Atem / Yami Yugi) is documented and the lengths he is willing to go.

He advanced the technology of the world so far just so he could find the long dead pharaoh who went back to his time/ spirit world and he nearly did it.

He even found a way to counter magic using technology.

Though despite his ego that could rival MOUNTAINS in size, Kaiba does care about his little brother mokuba, willingly sacrificing himself just to protect him. Even willing to put his life on the line to save him.

When it comes to showmanship, Seto Kaiba is number one, and likely the inspiration for EVERY BADASS ANIME OUTFIT TO EXIST

_______________________________________________________________________

1. Vegeta (Dragon ball Z and Dragon Ball Super)

When one thinks the word Rival, one man pops into my head. Bar none, the Prince of all Saiyans. Vegeta.

The prince of all Tsundere’s, the walking Napoleon complex. The genocidal warrior to defender of earth and father of two.

Vegeta’s goal was to be Number one, and Kakarot/ Goku is the one that stands in his way.

After Frieza’s defeat, Vegeta’s goal was to surpass Goku, to prove he is number one.

His actions and antics could hardly be considered good, not until the end of the Buu saga would he even be considered a good person.

But the reason why vegeta is number one is because of what happened during Super.

Vegeta has gained a LOT of character development during the sequel series. Especially in the super Manga.

Vegeta shows that he has grown to care about the planet that he has lived on, even feeling guilty of his actions back in the Namek saga, doing his best to make things right.

He still wants to beat Goku, but he has more reasons to fight then simply his pride.

Vegeta is arguably the most developed rival on this list.

There are other iconic rivals that could have hit number one, but Vegeta is the text book definition of Rival.

Thats why the Prince of all Saiyans is finally number one

[t-underneaththeradardancing]

w

i real lee duz spend in ordinate time - but then again wat is time and al say it relative but an in law maybe 

staring at moons  

its frog friday - not just on tumblr  - in westerville ohio its a big thang  - i mean nets and flashlights  provided - mad science yah  - the teenz in sf well a couple and they aint on tumblr - posted a few tek nick  a lie of time early 

a prob w corrupted filez from recordings - tek again bee hating  - niko sez nbd but gotta go studio to transfer non corrupt 

sales of book - hey there been sales imma happy - idk how many last count 5 known imma give 5 away lol 

the kitty such a good one - playful like kitten still  - she just a bit - idk concerned - yah its almost a year - it duz a head trip and not the good kind - not like worried - just like - ru cool ? not gonna do anything too human stoopid ru  - it scared me last time 

i feed my crows - we cool - casual w the og murder  - we walk hop fly together - it took 5 to bring me back from the other side  and yah it aint happen again  - they gonna help me cross when  - they know and know i know  - and yah i aint a swamp witch either but not an english major - and im some kinda - played an hour live on ig trynna trance the fuck completely like i used to  - mixed bag - wuz forcing - fuck itz midnite  - i can wish liam frog fri goodness and love  - thatsa good thing fur shure  - i might not b here if he wuznt there that night 

so imma nini in a minnit - well - after i duz the rest of the dishes - but gonna save like draft and get back loretta inna morning  - yah imma post 

its morning and posted as promised 

a rocky start - early - unpoet laundry also endless imma do some as soon as i wake up - notice i take no such bother bout the riting  - woke af but still sleepin 

a merrow or 20 from the kitty - saunter on her way to breakfast - such a good one the kitty - i spose the bfast is also - i dont eatz cat food imma gessing - bout the taste - not weather i eatz cat food 

sleepin more thatz a good thing but so much time gone  - aint gettin junger - u wanna random - who looks outside - dreams - who looks inside - awakes  - quote unquote - pretty zen af if u axe me 

too early birdsong 

soon come 

love 

[zenosanalytic]

People What Aint From Round Here Is The Problem...

So I just watched Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood and I have THOUGHTS:

Ive read a few reviews&ruminations on this film at this point and I can’t believe that none of them got(or at least, mentioned explicitly) the primary thesis of this movie, spcl given that Tarentino flatly states it out the mouth of his primary protagonist within, like, the first 15-20mins of the film: “...most important thing in this town is when you’re making money you buy a house in town. You don’t rent... Hollywood real estate means you live here. You’re not just visiting, not just passing through. You fuckin live here.” i.e., the most important thing in Hollywood, to Hollywood, is the people FROM Hollywood; Everyone else is just a filthy, trouble-making tourist or profiteer who is “Passing Through” and “Doesnt Get It” and  “Is Fucking It Up”(It being the film industry), and probably “Secretly Hates Movies”. There are places and aspects of this movie that are basically a Nativist Angeleno rant, written by a life-long Angeleno film-nerd-turned-film-maker, against Hollywood’s critics(and his critics which he just totally conflates with the former), and probably non-Angelenos(and non-Californians?) in general.

There are two ways to read this thesis: Straight and Subverted/Satirized.

The evidence for reading it straight is pretty plentiful. Lots of reviews have puzzled at where the line connecting the constant hippie-bashing, the weird focus on knocking Polanski’s Polishness & preference for shooting in London, and the inexplicable pot-shot at Bruce Lee is, and I think this is it. “The Hippies” are repeatedly presented as a corrupting force: digging through trash, living in squalourous filth at the Spahn Ranch dragging members of “Old Hollywood” like its owner into it with them, selling drugs, and using sex to “control” men. And attached to this is presenting “The Hippies” as foreign; not only from another place, but refusing to assimilate with the LA way of life and hostile to it. The Manson family are the only explicitly identified “Hippies” in the film(other than, possibly, the one who sells Cliff an acid cig). The only “positive” portrayals of Bruce Lee in the film are silent ones of him teaching anglos kung fu, which has some fairly obvs and well-understood Implications.

But there’s also good evidence for reading it as subverted and satirized. Both Tate and Dalton are NOT from California, let alone LA, and Booth’s origins are left unclear. Dalton’s the only one of them explicitly id’d as being from elsewhere(Missouri), but Tate’s easy to google and she was a military kid who grew up all over the place. When Dalton returns from Italy, that sequence and his look in it are VERY reminiscent of the scenes introducing Polanski at the beginning of the film. The side-characters around Tate, perennially shown in a positive light, are also non-Angelenos. Doing Spaghetti Westerns revitalizes Dalton’s career, despite his disdain for Italian cinema. Tate and her crew, while not explicitly ID’d as “Hippies” and often shown in Mod and other fashion styles, are also presented in “Hippie” fashion, shown listening to “Hippie” music, smoking the “Hippie” Reefer(Im sorry, but Comedy Demanded this phrasing and I am Devout u_u), and implied to be living a polyamorous “Hippie” life.

It really is difficult for me to say which predominates. On the one entirely metaphorical hand, the ways in which Dalton’s Angeleno chauvinism are subverted and mocked are fairly obvs, but on the other emh, the film is FILLED with LITERALLY GLOWING nostalgia for this pre-Hippy, pre-Lefty, pre-70s, Conservative and Republican California&Los Angeles. Dalton’s focus on property-ownership&the film industry in the opening thesis could easily be seen as resolving these subversive contradictions to allow for a straight read(ie: Tate, Booth, and Dalton are “Hollywood People” who’ve both bought real-estate in LA, and who’ve grown up in film or film-adjacent fields and choose to center their adult lives in the film industry). So much, in fact, that I kinda started to wonder abt QT’s politics while watching it. And, if it WAS satirical, then what’s the point of the knock to Bruce Lee and focusing criticisms of Polanski on his Polishness and shooting in London? Is that just meant to characterize Dalton and Booth as nativists and racists?

It really cannot be said enough that there are REALLY MORE APPROPRIATE CRITICISMS to make of Polanski than 1)begin Polish, 2)possessing boyish effeminacy, and 3)preferring to shoot movies in London instead of LA. Which are this movie’s only problems with him(though it also takes the time to show him bitchily smoking a cigarette in an evening gown while being rude to a dog). Obvsl I dont object to villainizing an ACTUAL REAL LIFE VILLAIN like this shitstain, but I DO object to being asked(albeit gently) to participate in this film’s understated nationalist bigotry.

It’s possible that Cliff’s turning Pussycat down during the drive to the ranch was intended to be this but I highly doubt it. And if it was it’d be misrepresenting Polanski’s misdeeds enormously, considering that Pussycat, the too-young girl, is the sexual instigator in this film. Polanski liked to manipulate, drug, and rape underaged girls(he pulled the same shit with models in Europe before getting busted for it in LA, btw, then continued doing it after fleeing back to Europe); really not the same situation.

There’s another irony in that, while the film goes out of its way to call Polanski “boyish” and imply that makes him feminine and that this is Bad, there’s also a subtle under-current that... Tarentino sees himself in his youth the same way? He’s certainly never been short like Polanski and Jay Sebring are/were, QT’s 6 1, but the actors he cast to play them and the description made of the pair in-film are more than a bit reminiscent of how Tarentino looked&was discussed in the press back in the 90s when he was starting out. AAAaaand the film explicitly calls that Tate’s “Type”; leaving me with the question: would Tarentino be able to stop himself from implying a dead starlet would have been attracted to him? I leave the answer to your imaginations, Dear Readers u_u

Having said all that it IS a really good film, which I liked, I dont think it’d be very hard to set aside this political stuff while watching, the driving sequences are especially emotive&exhilarating, and there’s some seriously great acting in it. IDK if I’d say I liked it more than the recent Emma movie, tho.

I feel like each of the trio, Tate, Dalton, and Booth, were meant to symbolically Embody LA/Hollywood/California? Like Pitt especially seemed to be channeling movie characters and CJ from GTA: San Andreas throughout his performance, while I couldnt help but think of Ronald Reagan watching DiCaprio(spcl given the character’s likely politics). So there’s this sense in which the film is a fantasy of “Old Hollywood”, embodied by these three, Vanquishing its “Enemies”, represented by The Hippies(moralizing, pretentious, gross leftist) and potentially Polanski&Lee(foreign film ppl who refuse to integrate into the LA scene). Again, given the political history of Cali after this era, this embodiment raises some questions for me abt the film and QT’s politics(particularly in re: misogyny and feminism).

Also DiCaprio is totally going to get pitched a Reagan biopic off of this role and I sincerely hope he has the good sense to turn that shit the fuck down.

Circling back to the ranting at his critics, this movie was definitely and consciously a response to them. Like: up until the last 5-15 minutes of the film, and aside from a handful of too-lingering too fetishistic too on-the-nose creep shots of the female cast that Tarentino simply could not stop himself from making, OUATiH is precisely the sort of “Serious” film Tarentino’s critics have been saying he should make for decades now(of course he did Jackie Brown, which was that and which he blew Completely out of the park). And then there’s that bloody, gross-out, exploitation-movie ending. I dont actually think it was as bad as many critics were saying it was? For some reason I was thinking there was gonna be a massacre of the ENTIRE Manson family, which would have been totally out of left-field. But it WAS clearly a stinger of a major tone-shift thrown in as a Fuck You to the ppl who’ve called out his violent and exploitative preferences throughout the years. As for me I generally like his movies and think he’s a great filmmaker but he absolutely does go too far sometimes.

Rick Dalton, in an evening-gown, with a mixer full of iced-margarita in one hand, getting all up in the face of the driver of a loud exhaust-spewing jalope in his PRIVATE STREET was TOTALLY Tarentino himself :| By which I mean NOT ONLY that That’s ABSOLUTELY the sort of cameo he would have given himself 30 years ago and if it made any sort of sense at all in the film(which here it wouldnt have, obvsl), BUT ALSO that I feel 94% confident that Tarentino has actually done that at least once in his lifetime :| :|

I think the monologue&interactions T gives Bruce Lee leading up to the fight were probably more insulting to him than the fight itself. Contrary to popular discussion, it isn’t Pitt’s character totally trashing Lee, he gets in one good throw after Lee repeats a successful attack at his request(which I doubt Lee would have ever done from what little I know about him; not being predictable in a fight was his whole Deal), but rather an even duel between them(most of the fight is just the two blocking each others’ attacks). I dont think the film was trying to say “Lee was full of hot-air”, if it wanted to say that it’d have shown him getting trounced instead of showing him knock Booth down then trade him blow for blow, but more “Lee was pretty arrogant and a bit pretentious”.

OK, that’s abt all that I can think of right now: thanks for reading ^v^

[adamarmeadowcroft]

“Tell us a story from your journey, Sir Adamar!” Rosemarii had asked with a smile. “I'm sure you have such exciting tales!” Adamar sat silent for a time, debating if such a tale was appropriate given the happy mood everyone was enjoying. His eyes lifted from the flames of the campfire, a slow exhale escaping past his lips with a nod of defeat. “Very well, my Lady... where do I begin?”

The night gave way to the gentle touch of the sun, dew and mist still clinging to the air about the small makeshift camp. The flames of the fire had died hours before, leaving only the feint wafting of smoke and the crackling of dying embers behind. The sound of blue jays and sparrows trekking off to find this days breakfast stirred the lone man propped against a large oak. A groan escaped the armored figure as he reached up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes, feeling the ache in his back as he sat up straight. “No comforts of town, he said. What I would give for a straw mattress.” A light chuckle escaped Adamar as he pushed himself to his feet to stand in the peaceful ambience of the morning forest.

He found himself days behind schedule as he trekked his way across the Eastern Kingdoms towards Uther’s Tomb. No time restraint was given as he was commanded to leave the city, and so he had no grievances taking the longer scenic route through the forests and hills. Adamar groaned some more as he stretched out, digging his boot into the embers of the fire in hopes of igniting it once more. When his lazy attempt failed, he begrudgingly collected some timber about the grounds and worked to lite the fire once more. 

Hours had passed and breakfast had been finished as Adamar readied to pack up and head further north. The camp was packed up quickly enough and the fire was doused with a bucket of dirt. He took up his sword and once more stood idle in the sounds of the forest. Slowly, he dropped to a knee and buried the tip of his sword into the dirt. Wrapping both hands about the hilt, he rested his forehead against the pommel and took in a deep breath. “As a new day dawns, send the radiance of your light to shine in my heart. Make me true to your teaching; keep me free from error and corruption. Give me the strength to carry on; to right my wrongs. Let me be your healing hand to the sick; Your hammer of Justice to the wicked; and the keeper of all that is good.” Even though his eyes were shut, he could feel the warmth of the light piercing through the morning mist to wrap about him and bathe him in its presence. 

The silence of the woods was broken at the sound of a woman's scream. It echoed off the trees and sent birds fluttering to the sky. Adamar raised his gaze to the mists that surrounded his camp, unsure of where the cry had came from. Moments passed before another scream echoed from somewhere to the east of him... the sound of armored foot falls and men shortly after.

She ran as fast as her feet could carry her, soiled white gown fluttering in her wake. Blood spotted her fine wear and mud caked her knees where she had fallen several times. “No... no, light please” She gasped, barreling through the bushes as the branches scratched and tore at her face and arms. “She’s over here!” Came the cry of her captors not far behind. “ ‘urry up an’ nab her! The boss ‘ell ‘ave our heads if you let her get away!” The men cackled as they split up, darting through the underbrush after her. They knew these lands better than anyone and made quick work of cutting the girl off. “NO! Get away from me! I wont go back! I’ll die first!” The girl backed away from the thugs, unaware of the steep hill behind her. One more step sent her tumbling backwards and down the hill, crashing through bushes and bouncing off the boulders that were half buried. “Ha! You ‘ave a nice fall, darlin’?!” Blood trickled from her brow as she clawed at the dirt to pull herself away from this hell. The men were once more upon her, falling upon her like wild animals as they ripped at her clothing. “Get off of me! Light, please... someone... please.” 

The area grew silent suddenly as he eyes raised from the dirt to her assailants. They were no longer focused on her, but something else. Still sobbing, she followed their gaze as the sound of metal echoed yards away from them. He emerged out of the mist like an armored ghost, sword glinting in the morning light. “Who the hell is that? You lost, mate?” The men pointed their swords as the armored figure continued to grow closer. “Mind ye’ fuckin’ business afore you go an’ get hurt!”

Adamar stalked forward, his sword readied before him as he shifted his gaze between the two men. “One chance, leave the girl be.” His eyes shifted to stare into the eyes of the battered girl, hands tightening about the hilt of his blade. “Or die, here and now.” The two men laughed as they stepped away from the girl. They knew she was to exhausted and beaten to make it much further. “Well well, aint you’s just a brave soul. Well, cmon then tin man! W’ell get back to her when were done guttin’ you like a pig!” Adamar took a deep breath, closing his eyes for the briefest of moments. “So be it.”  Adamar began marching forward as the thugs to began to move in on him. “Light above, guide my hand.” It was if the sun itself had answered his prayer, light bursting forth from his sword. The mist melted away and the thugs could only raise their hands to shield their eyes from the blinding light. “Wha’ the hel-” The mans words were cut short as Adamar closed the distance and make short work of burying the tip of his blade through the mans stomach. His pal could only stare in horror at the blade that stuck out the back of his companions back, a feint glow radiating from the metal where blood did not stain it. “A-a-a... paladin?!” The man back away as he fumbled at his belt, pulling a crude looking horn from his side.

Adamar ripped the blade free, causing the now motionless thug to fall in a heap to the earth. A loud bellow filled his ears as he turned his gaze on the second... a horn between the mans lips as he began to retreat back up the hill. Instantly, the forest came alive with the sounds of shouting and the clanging of metal. Adamar did not pursue the man, but instead made his way to the girls side. “Can you stand?” He asked, kneeling down to place a gentle hand upon the back of her shoulder. The girl shirked away from his touch, still sobbing until she looked up into the calm blue eyes. Her breathing steadied some, but the look in her eyes spoke a thousand words of pain and sorrow. “Take heart... I shall see you away from this place.” The smile that had began to tug at her lips faded into one of fear as her gaze went behind him to the hill above. Adamar rose and turned to the sight of two dozen men lines up atop the hillside. A well fitted bandit raiding party, to say the least.

“You sure got balls coming into my woods, Paladin. She’s pretty, aint she? Tha’ why you tryin’ to steal her away from me?” The man that spoke was clearly the leader as the rest of the men flanked him. He was a large intimidating man who clearly made his way to the top buy beating the shit out of anyone in his way. His massive form leaned heavily atop a massive Warhammer that could flatten a mans breastplate. The rest of his gang sported crude maces, short sword’s and crossbows. Though none of them had armor save for a few that wore graves or pauldrons over their leathers. “Aint you alittle tiny to be a knight?” The leader asked, causing a roar of laughter to erupt from his men. “Hes probably just a boy been listening tah to many ah nana’s stories!”

Adamar couldn't help but chuckle silently to himself, wondering if these men would be laughing if he still possessed his original body. The humor faded as he moved to put himself between the girl and the hillside, sword bloodied and at his side. “I will give you all the same chance I gave this one.” He raised his voice so that they all might hear as he gestured with his blade at the dead man near him. “Leave this girl be. Turn away from this life of evil and seek forgiveness for the crimes you have committed.” Once more, his words were met with a fit of laughter. He raised his voice even louder as he raised the sword, sweeping the point to trace the top of the hillside. “Do not, then you may seek judgment... here and now! The choice is yours!”

The leader gestured for the others to shut their gobs as he began to slow clap. “Nice speech, kid. Balls, you got. But smarts, your lackin’... ya see, I got all these men, and there's jest one o’ you. You gonna wiggle your fingers an’ kill us all?” Adamar stepped forward and traced a half circle with the tip of his sword in the dirt before looking back to the group of marauders. “If I must. Make your choice.” 

“Alright, I’ve had enough o’ this little prick. Kill em’! An’ bring me back tha’ bitch!” Yelled the leader, sending a roar up among the men as they all began to surge down the hill side towards the lone knight and battered girl. Adamar spread his stance and raised his longsword over his head with both hands as he watched the tide descend upon them. “The Light is my Salvation, whom, then shall I fear?” The glow upon his blade began to grow brighter as he continued. “The Light is the strength of my Life, of whom then, shall I be afraid?” The first couple men made it to the bottom of the hill and were running headlong for him, maces raised above their heads. “I shall not be afraid... for the Light is with me!”

Light erupted from all around Adamar, coalescing into two angelic like wings that sprouted from his back. The sight alone gave pause to the men nearest to him before they charged in once more at the urging of their leader. “WHAT ARE YA WAITIN’ FER! GET EM!” As the first man passed over the half circle in the dirt, he was met with a outstretched hand. Light burst forth from Adamar’s palm before taking on the shape of a glorious hammer. It slammed the thug full in the face and filled the area with a sickening snap as his head lulled back, neck broken. Several move were closing in now as Adamar parried the next attack, swiftly bringing the blade back around the open the mans throat. A swift kick to the mans midsection sent him sprawling back lifeless... just outside that half circle. Three more men leapt over their fallen comrades and pressed Adamar at once. He parried another strike as blades slashed him across his midsection and head. The blows glanced off and left hardly a scratch, such was the quality of castle forged full plate. Adamar slashed the hand clean off from the next swing made at him before the wings upon his back vanished. The light suddenly surged outward from the soles of his boots, holy fire spreading across the dirt as it licked and set flame to his attackers clothing. 

The men fell to the ground, rolling like madmen as they tried to snuff out the flames that consumed them fully. The flames did not cease until the men lady motionless upon the earth. Seven men now surrounded him as they moved in, forcing Adamar back towards the girl as they sought to overtake him. Blows rang off his armor as he slashed and stabbed down two of them. But the sheer numbers overwhelmed even his kills as a mace slammed him in the side of the leg. “Graah!” He fell to a knee as another slash found the spot between the armor of his arm, causing a wide gash that began to trickle blood down his armor. He seized one man by the front of his leathers and pulled him into the downward strike of his comrade, his head cleaved in two. More and more men entered the fray until he was surrounded on all sides. The blows began to dent his armor and take their toll as his head began to throb from the constant hammering. “Tha’s it boys! Gut tha’ little weasel!” Adamar saw for the briefest second, between the legs of his attackers... that poor girl. Her knees were pulled to her chest and all hope had left her eyes at the sight before her. 

He would see her away from this place. Gritting his teeth, he braced himself firmly against the ground as the power welled within him. The leader could only gawk as the pile of men suddenly erupted and men went scattering everywhere. In the middle stood that lone knight, surrounded in a bubble of glorious light. Most of the men that hadn't been knocked out by the blast were now high tailing it deeper into the woods. “We don’ get paid enough fer this! Lets get the fuck outa here!” The leader snarled as he pointed after the fleeing men. “Get back here you cowards! I’ll fuck yer skulls when I finds you!” He cursed loudly as he looked back at the lone knight.

Adamar breathed deeply as he looked at the bodies that littered the ground about him. He slowly trudged back towards the line in the dirt he had drawn. He readied his sword before him as he locked eyes with the meat head at the top of the hill. Though, he faltered and staggered as his wounded arm fell to his side. It was then, he noted the small pool of blood forming beneath his feet. The strength went from his legs and he fell hard to one knee. It took everything to keep from falling face first into the dirt. “Fuck....im outa shape.” He mumbled to himself weakly. 

“Fuck it! Looks like ima have to finish this myself!” Bellowed the leader as he was already making his way down the hill, that massive hammer propped on his shoulder. “You put up a good fight, you little shit! But playtimes over! Hope the bitch was worth it!” Adamar buried the tip of his sword into the dirt and used it to prop himself up as he watched the man loom over him. “She is.” Adamar said, raising his chin in defiance and tugged off his helmet to drop in the dirt beside him. “Shitty last words, boy.” He hefted the hammer high over his head, sucking in a deep breath. Adamar closed his eyes and a smile came to his face as the clouds above opened up and basked them in the warmth of the day. Just as that hammer was about to come down, a globe of light descended from the heavens towards the pair. Adamar opened his eyes as that orb formed into a massive hammer that crashed into the top of the leaders skull, slipping a knife from his belt. The blow sent the meathead crashing to his knees in front of Adamar, hammer falling into the dirt beside them. The two stared at each other for a moment before Adam spoke up. “I’ll pray for your soul.” The leaders eyes went wide as Adamar thrusted that dagger into the side of the thugs neck. The leaders massive form fell backwards as he struggled to breath past the gurgling of blood in his throat. It only took a minute before the struggling stopped and the forest once more grew quiet and peaceful.

Adamar took in a slow deep breath, using what strength he had left to push himself to his feet. “Light... have mercy on these lost souls. Bring them home.” He turned and staggered his way towards the battered girl, who was now on her feet and wide eyed. “Y-you... saved me. Why?” Adamar only smiled to the best of his ability, holding out his arm to help her away from the grisly scene. “Because... there is good in this world worth protecting.”

Adamar looked up from the fire as he finished the story of his adventure to Uthers Tomb, smiling lightly at Rosemarii. “Her name was Liandri. Im just happy this one had a happy ending for a change.”

[trashyvirster]

Anyone else thinking about how Viren and Aarvos are literally reflections of each other??? When they first meet, they each have to look into the mirror, where they see the other, to communicate.

Okay, they look like complete opposites but hold on!

What does Viren see when he looks into the mirror and sees Aaravos? He probably sees a mysterious scholar, someone IMPORTANT, powerful, maybe dangerous and untrustworthy, elvish, the answer to his problems, a prisoner (well im assuming Viren thinks this lol) and...sexy.

Viren doesn’t see any of these traits within himself, but I think Viren stans would beg to differ! He may not have the mysterious allure of Aaravos, but he sure as hell keeps his secrets. No one seems to have any idea how much he loves Harrow. No one suspects he turned Harrow into the bird (okay that hasn’t been canonically confirmed but come on! The show would make no sense if it aint canon). No one knew, until now, that he kept the egg. And we currently don’t have any canon confirmation that Harrow even knows about Viren’s secret lair.

Everyone takes him at face value, they don’t realize just how deep his secrets and mysteries are.

Sure, Viren’s got insecurity issues and doesn’t think himself important (thanks Harrow) but the man literally saved 100k lives with his plan. And who was it that ultimately slayed Thunder? He’s probably the most famous mage since the first mage. Plot wise, Viren is arguably the protagonist of his own story, team Callum doesn’t need to exist to tell any of it! Harrow chose him to stand in the Kings portrait by his side. VIREN IS SO IMPORTANT AND HE’S SUCH A MESS HE DOESN’T REALIZE HIS OWN VALUE.

Dangerous and untrustworthy, check.

Elvish. Ah. The dragon prince twitter once asked a really weird question “anyone have any head canons that Viren is half elf?” What an odd question! I haven’t seen any fandom metas that Viren is half elf. Obviously, I doubt he is. But fans have noticed that his corruption is making his skin color, eyes and hair, the same as Aaravos. It’s almost like he’s mutating into a startouched.

Viren only thinks he needs Aaravos to solve his problems. He feels just as trapped in his situation as Aaravos physically is. And a lot of fans think he’s just as sexy as Aaravos!!

Oh and powerful?? I get it that dark magic is like “cheating”. But Viren is powerful. No, he’s not “magical”. But not just anyone can do what he can. Callum blacked out after just doing one black magic spell! Claudia fell on her knees and lost her breath after healing Soren. Black magic isn’t always easy or cheap. And this man freaking SLAYED THUNDER.

Whatever spell he used, probably would have killed any other mage. The mans a beast!

So yeah, I think he’s powerful! But once again, Viren doesnt recognize this quality in himself. But it’s there in his reflection......

Okay what about Aaravos? What does he see in Viren? LOLOLOLOL.

He probably sees a desperate man, heart broken, lonely, vulnerable. Curious and thirsty for power/magic. He sees a man frustrated at himself for not being able to accomplish his goals. Someone easily....influenced. And he sees a dark mage ready to do anything; the opportunity Aaravos has been waiting for.

It’s hard to say without Aaraovs’ backstory, but I think he fell in love with Elarion and whatever that story is, it’s gonna be tragic and ultimately lead to him being trapped in the mirror.

So yeah! I think he’s just as heart broken and desperate as Viren is. A startouch elf, doing some blood pact ritual with the first damn human to see him?? His need to hear Viren’s voice?? His offer of servitude?? His promise to stay with him even after Viren fails to escape??

Sure, Aaravos isn’t doing any of these things because he’s in love with Viren. No doubt he’s being manipulative. But his manipulation is born of fear; the fear of being cast out again as nothing. He insists on helping Viren because he needs to prove he’s useful, USEFUL. Not just to manipulate Viren, but because if he can’t prove how useful he is, he’s afraid he won’t see or hear from another soul for another 1k years.

Which makes sense why he would promise to stay with Viren even after Viren failed to escape rather than decide the human mage is useless to him. NO! Viren is still his only chance.

Frustrated at himself? You bet. Whatever Aaravos was trying to do 1k years ago, I think he failed. Viren thinks he’s frustrated?? He doesn’t know frustration lol.

I didn’t think much of it now, but these two idiots actually reflect each other and truly think the other is the answer to their problems. Its so poetic to have a mirror represent them!!

UNLESS THE WRITING IS FAILING ME AND NONE OF THIS TRUE...!!! WHY USE A MIRROR??

Knowing that they reflect each other means we can speculate where their character arcs are going. Their reflections should start to merge....Viren is gonna become more like Aaravos, POWERFUL, dangerous, someone who can change the fate of the world, and you know...not human!!

While Aaravos while finally lose his cool and have some epic emotional breakdown, because at the end of the day, he just wants to be with his lover again.

...just a thought....

And this is just viravos trash talking here, but what if Viren is the ONLY person who can see Aaravos because the magic that binded him has only one loophole....its a bloody mirror, only his own reflection can look back at him. His name is Viren.

[undertale-anomaly20]

Sooner or later you're gonna be mine x chubby! Reader

Chapter 1: The waitress and the mobster

Oh God, I was hearin da rumors, but I didnt believe hed actually do it. As if our town wasnt a big miserable wasteland of violence, misery and murder already, now hes actually welcomin their kind into it as well.

Frisk paused, her hairbrush in mid-stroke, as she heard the piano man grumble crudely under his breath. She hadnt sang in this club before and truth be told, it didnt have a great dressing room for performers to get all dolled up as many owners put it, so Frisk took it upon herself to dress up in the ladies bathroom.

After putting on her shimmery low-cut baby-blue dress and applying all that heavy makeup to her face, she exited the bathroom, leaving her aftershow clothes in one of the broken stalls and began brushing her hair on stage. It didnt take much to style it, which was one of the main reason why Frisk had cut it short into a bob hairstyle. One less stupid thing she had to worry about before she got on stage. Just brush it till it looks neat, put a flower in it and the crowds still think you look like a million bucks.

Not that Frisk cared too much about what her fans thought of her. All she wanted to do was sing, get paid and go home before she saw another fight break out between the members of her audience. Gang members erupting into violent and bloody fights in the middle of her songs were becoming more and more common over the last few months. And what were these fights over? Anything really. Gang members entering other gang territory, drug deals gone bad, gun deals wrong horribly bad. It didnt matter. The result was always the same: somebody would be leaving in a body bag.

Frisk hadnt gotten used to it, but she had definitely become quicker with dodging flying bullets and pieces of furniture that came her way.

She tried to deny it when she was younger, but now it was obvious. Her once pretty city was quickly sinking into corruption thanks largely to the mob groups that were overtaking large areas of her city. The dons and high-class mobsters ran everything from the small mom and pop stores to the police force. Even the citys officials were nothing more than corrupt individuals in nice suits with clean smiles. The good decent poor folks suffered the most, having to pay out protection fees but there were always ways to make money.

Everybody had a price. Everybody could endure or change themselves for money. Frisk knew. To her despair, she watched a number of her long-time friends get lost in the world of easy money and quick deaths. She had been to more funerals than birthdays parties this year alone. She could never blame them though.

Well everybody except her sister, (name).

(name) was one of the only people she could really trust and was one of the few people uncorrupted by this hell hole of a city. As children the both of them knew nothing but love and kindness with (name), being older by a few years, looking after her and protecting her even as the years had gone by she never stopped standing up for her and always flashing that big beautiful smile telling her 'it's gonna be ok' even if everything wasn't.

Frisk smiled at the though of her sister being there for her every step of the way in her life a little anoying but what was she to do (name) was very stubborn her big (eye colour) eyes that still held a little glimmer like she did when she was younger, her long thick (hair colour) hair that always seemed to shine no matter what the lighting was, her (skin colour) skin that alway had one or two burise on it and her body was alwasy as plump and smooth as ever. not to say her sister was overweight drastically but she tended to look down on herself at her body shape, even though she was what the pigs f this city considered 'fat' she had her curvy outline a bit, she had a bit above average size bust, plump lips and a big behind.

The world was going through a depression after all. And Frisk herself was not exactly a wealthy professional singer. Right now her gigs were seedy clubs with even seedier owners, whose businesses reeked of cigar smoke and strong booze and no matter how many times Frisk showered the smell seemed to linger.

And her nightly audiences were the lowest class of criminals. Not that Frisk judged on them on poverty levels. In fact, most of the best people she knew were struggling to get by. But when it all came down to the wire a rich mobster was just as bad as his poor lackey. Both types murder for money and power and both types will harm the innocent to get what they want.

Frisk really needed to get out. She just hadnt saved enough money yet. She may have been a popular singer in these types of bars, but the pay wasnt great. She made just enough to pay for her crappy apartment, her bills and the protection fee her local police force demanded of its residents.

The piano man saw her baffled look and pulled back the curtain even further so she could get a good look at her audience for the night.

She squinted through the cigarette smoke that lightly covered the many faces of her audience and tried to see what he was moaning about.

Look at the last table in the back. Youll see what Im talking about, toots.

Frisk did and gasped aloud. The piano man chuckled, letting her know she was indeed seeing what she was thought she was seeing.

Seeing Don Dee was a shock in itself. Even small fish like Frisk knew who he was just by looking at him. A top dog, a big shot, a huge fish...and the fact that he was sitting in this piece of shit of a bar was astounding in itself. The man was known for class and expensive taste. The suit he was wearing outshined all the cheap ones that almost all the other club patrons were wearing.

But the don being here wasnt the most shocking part. The most shocking part was his companion. The gentleman sitting beside the Don was...not from the city to say the least. And if he had entered the club by himself, he would have been killed instantly. But sitting with the Don made him untouchable. In fact, most patrons were going out of their way not to stare at him.

Say, is he- Frisk began, but stopped when the musician laughed again.

Yep. The Don himself is invitin monsters in the operation now. Can you believe that, toots? Disgustin monsters. Pfft...hes makin a mistake is what hes doin. Gonna lose all that respect. Monsters..Now this town really has sank as low as it can go.

Frisk frowned at his choice of words, and the effect they had on her, but continued to stare, even though she felt a little bad doing it. both her and (name) knew that people who differed from theri own race and in this case species shouldnt be stared at like they were some kind of spectacle, but Frisk really couldnt help herself.

Sure she heard all about the monsters that lived in the neighboring cities miles away from her own, and sure she knew they looked different from humans and their customs and politics were worlds apart from human, but to actually see one was...well it was something that deserved a second glance.

He was a massive monster. He was taller than any human Frisk had ever seen and he was wide too. Not fat, but there was no denying how incredibly powerful he looked. He made the Dons bodyguards look like little boys.

And his suit was even more impressive than the Dons if that were possible. His jacket, fedora hat and trousers were black, while his waist coat was an eye-catching red. Frisk wasnt too fond of that color, unless it was on her sister, but she had to admit the monster had style. A fat cigar was in his teeth and the smoke coming from it was strange. It wasnt gray smoke. It was red smoke and curled in unusual designs before it disappeared.

But his size and clothing were nothing compared to what he actually looked like. He had a huge smile on his face and despite the dimmed lights, Frisk saw a glimmering gold tooth flashing in his mouth every time the skeleton turned his head.

Out of the corner of her eyes she caught the flash of pink in the light and turned her attention towards the colour to see it was a pink heart hair pin. only one person she knew had that pin and it just so happened to be her sister that was the owner of said pin. her sister was wearing the standered waitress uniform aswell as having her hair tied into a high bun with the exeption of a few strands that fell in front of her face with that sweet smile on her face but Frisk knew it was fake she knew her sister hated dealing with these 'murdering pricks' as (name) liked to call them but they both needed the money and even with friks singing it's not enough.

Frisk watches her sister carrying a tray of alcohol towards Don Dees table. her heart practically stopped in worry for her sister as she watched her place the glass fill with the nasty brew in front of the don and a nother in front of the monster before walking away.

Damn freak, the piano man muttered and lowered the curtain.

Before the cheap bright red curtain could blocked her view, Frisk felt her heart jump in her throat. At the last second the skeleton turned his head to look where her sister was who, in turn, was looking back at him.

He took the cigar out of his mouth with two of his large bony fingers and winked at her. (name) quickly turned away with her head down before the curtain fell into place. That look...Frisk didnt understand why his friendly little gesture towards her sister sent a cold chill down her spine, but she tried to quickly dismissed it.

It doesnt matter, she thought to herself. Im sure (name)s not gonna talk to him if she can help it.

The piano man sat down at his piano, cracking his fingers and looking at Frisk. She hated the way his eyes wandered from her face and rested on her breasts. She glared at him, covering her chest with her arms. The man just shrugged coolly, completely unbothered.

Hey, I aint touching em toots. No law against lookin.

both her and her sister needed to get out of this city. Go somewhere nicer where smoke from cigarettes and guns didnt greet them every second of everyday. Where people actually cared if another person was killed. Maybe when she had enough saved up she could move to the country and where her sister wouldn't come home with brusies and bruised knuckles every week and that painful look in her eye that tells her 'I can't keep this up for much longer' as happy as her sister tried to be she wasn't dumb (name) had the same attitude as Frisk toward the city folk who misreated her and gave them the same amount that they gave her, absolutly none. Maybe they could live in a pretty cottage and start a garden. She couldnt remember the last time she saw a flower growing outside and she doubt that (name) could either.

She smiled faintly. Her mother always talked about starting a garden when Frisk was really little and-

But going back to our conversation, the Don really is makin a mistake. As soon as we let one monster in, more are gonna come. Just you wait. Im mean look at what happened when we started lettin the darkies in-

Frisk felt a shot of anger bloom in her chest.

Why dont you keep those disgusting thoughts to yourself and get ready for the show? Since the Don is here we cant afford you screwing things up. Word around the grapevine is that you arent the cream of the crop when it comes to playing that thing.

It was a lie of course. Frisk knew nothing about this man, but that didnt stop her from feeling a sort of smug satisfaction enter her as the piano mans face changed from cocky and arrogant to enraged and disgusted.

Goddamn, bleedin heart whore, he muttered loud enough for her to hear, but low enough so nobody else could here. You and your type are the reason why there are so much problems in this world. You treat the inferior a certain way and suddenly they start demandin to be treated that way by everybody…

Frisk smiled and continued brushing her hair, humming the songs she was going to sing for the audience tonight. It was always nice to be told that. Whenever somebody told her that or something similar to that, Frisk couldnt help but feel like she was more than just some seedy bar singer who sang for murderers and criminals.

The piano man and her didnt speak again and Frisk continued to brush her hair until the audience started to quiet down.

Showtime , Frisk thought grimly, no longer excited about being on stage.

The curtain parted and the horrible spotlight that hit her was nearly blinding, but before she could adjust to it, the piano started playing.

She sang the first song with ease and much to her disappointment the piano man didnt make one mistake. Guy knew his instrument. Too bad he was a racist prick.

For the most part, Frisk and (name) loved musicians. All that passion being played through their fingers or mouths and whenever either of them spoke to them they always wanted to be something more than what they were. Just like her, they dreamt of getting out of the city and being somewhere safe and pretty.

At one point when Frisk was younger and still wanted to make singing her lifes career she would dream of marrying a gentle musician. The two of them would become famous and sing at only the best clubs and have children who loved music and would sing and play too and-

Frisk never would have thought in a million years that she would grow to hate the talent she once cherished. The spotlight was always too bright, the places always reeked of blood and booze and the applause was laced with lewd comments about her body.

(name) had a more possible dream. As a child all she wanted was to settle down with a man and have children who she would sing lullabys to and fill her home with music and love but as she grew her body changed and her heart sank further down at every negative comment made her way.

She was too weak for this city. She knew, but thankfully none of these cruel people knew it. Her dad once told her that if you show any weakness to people like mobsters and criminals they would eat you alive. She had no doubt he had been correct. when Kailyn was told this she pu all her energy into making sure none of these corrupted bastards could do a damn thing to her sister.

Frisk longed for the day where her and (name) would sing for hours on end with smiles in their hearts, laughing at everything but the thing Frisk missed most was her sisters singing. Frisk knew as a child her sister had the better voice andbut she didn't mind if anything she worked hard to be just like her but this damn cities corrupted men and women with there words of hate and jelousy...(name) had done her best to protect Frisk from those words but she, herself, had been exposed to those words for too long and all those negatice comments about her apperance, as if there was anything wrong with how she looked, got to her making her do what those bastards wanted her to do.

Shut up.

After her first song ended, the applause was loud and hard. Frisk forced a smile on her face and blew a kiss into the crowd.

Now adjusted to the blinding light she looked at her audience her sisters face smiling up at her was one of the first she saw. Gray smoke blurred their faces but almost instantly her eyes were drawn to the skeletons red smoke. She looked at him and the look he was giving back to her nearly took her breath away. It was so intense. So...extreme and he never looked down or away from her.

Even when the Don was talking to him quietly about whatever crime-ridden business they had together, the skeleton would respond but never break his gaze away.

Frisk swallowed before she spoke.

Such a lovely crowd here tonight and I would like to take this opportunity to personally thank Mr. Dee for honoring me with his presence and tolerating my cat-screeching I like to call singing.

A rough round of laughter and applause reached Frisks ears. The old Don waved to the crowds and then offered her a wave as well. Forcing back the vomit and physically battling with herself to keep her smile on her face, Frisk blew a kiss directly at the old man who had killed so many people whether they were guilty or innocent. Whether they were a part of his gang or an innocent bystander.

We really need to get out of this town' Frisk thought as she began her next song.

She almost messed up a few of her notes. That skeletons red eyes had gone black as soon as she blew that kiss to the Don and she was having trouble focusing until she looked to her sister, who was on break watching her with that big ole smile she loved, then it seemed easier to sing knowing her sister could sit and watch like she did when the were children

don't worry sis, for once, I'm gonna be the one to save ya'

_____________________________________________________________________

(name)s side

(name) watched as the partons of the bar laughed to each other some of them were good people others not so much. there were those who were friendly, kind and nice those were the rare patrons that popped in once in a while and then there were the assholes hat showed up every god damn day and the degrading remarks they make at her or behind her back annoyed her more often than not but the lewd and disgusting remarks and cat calls they directed towards her younger sister made her blood boil.

oh how she wanted to bash them all over the head with their bottles but she knew better if she acted upon her wishes not only would it cost her the job she worked hard to get it would cost Frisk her job. she just smiled sweetly and agreed with the patrons to keep them happy no matter how much it sickened her to do so.

"hey doll! go another order for ya!" (name) turned to her boss ready to retreive her latest order just as she was about to reach for it she notied her boss looked nervous but why? this man is the most intimidating person she knows that is a good person at heart he's aken on multiple drunken patrons at once so what could sacre this man so bad that he was white as a ghost then it clicked only one person in the bar currently that would reduce this man to a fearful state like this was Don Dee.

(name) tried to keep calm and remembered why she worked here. for Frisk her baby sister she picked up the tray with both hands and made her way to the table. sure don dee made her nervous who wouldn't be around a man that could kill you with but a wave of his hand but once she was nearing the table her eyes weren't on the don but on the monster that sat nex to him.

He was a massive monster. He was taller than any human (name) had ever seen and he was wide too. Not fat, but there was no denying how incredibly powerful he looked. He made the Dons bodyguards look like little boys and his suit was even more impressive than the Dons if that were possible. His jacket, fedora hat and trousers were black, while his waist coat was an eye-catching red. Frisk wasnt too fond of that color, but she had to admit the monster had style. A fat cigar was in his teeth and the smoke coming from it was strange. It wasnt gray smoke. It was red smoke and curled in unusual designs before it disappeared.

But his size and clothing were nothing compared to what he actually looked like. He had a huge smile on his face and despite the dimmed lights, (name) saw a glimmering gold tooth flashing in his mouth every time the skeleton turned his head. In all honesty (name) thought the monster had some sort of charm to him shaking her head she made it to the table and placed the disgusting brew in front of the don making sure to smile sweetly then moved onto the monster. oh how she hated how people used that word as an insult spitting it out of their mouths like it was venom but what could you do she placed the small glass in front of him and smiled walking away she didn' make it that far before she felt eyes on her.

she turned around to meet the monsters red eye light gaze they were mesmorising, beautiful even, she felt like she couldn't look away he took the cigar out of his mouth with two of his large bony fingers and winked at her. (name) quickly turned away with her head down embarassed at being caught then sat down calling for her break.

Frisk scurried off stage after she finished her songs, pausing only briefly to wave at the handsome jazz band that was scheduled to play right after her. They returned the wave and started to do some playful and very cute cat-calling that wasnt lewd or vulgar at all her eyes soon found her sister waiting for her with her duffle bag in hand looks like she finished early.

both girls smiled to themsleves as they entered the empty bathroom, all the women in the audience have been waiting for that jazz band to play. They were becoming very popular and no doubt would make it big, and Frisk went into the broken stall where she left her clothes while (name) went into one of the wrking ones to change

Still some good guys out there' Frisk thought as she took off her painfully tight blue dress and put on her more preferred one. The fabric of her baggy blue and pink sweater dress was a warm and welcomed change from the dress she just had on.

She stuff the blue dress in her purse without a care and walked out of the stall to meet up with (name) who was wearing a baggy dress sweater and long skirt.

(name) turned around and snorted "tryin to give clowns a run for their money, sis?" she joked. Dont get it wrong, Frisk didnt mind some make-up every once in awhile, but the rouge on her cheeks was too bright. Her blue eye-shadow was too heavy and her red lipstick was too much. But thats the club owners always wanted. Thats what the men in her audience wanted.

With a frustrated growl she turned on the sink, took a handful of soap, mixed it with water and began scrubbing her face viciously. We need to get out of here, Frisk thought of the millionth time as she continued to scrub her face until her skin turned red while (name) brushed out her long hair from its up do taking out each pin and tie in it. "great job as always with the singin' sis. practically had the attention of everyone in the room" Frisk smiled at her sisters compliment "thanks but...it would have been better if you were up there with me" (name) sighed "sorry but no it's been too long and I'm the waitress you're the singer"

Niether of them heard the bathroom door open so when they heard the heavy footsteps they turned towards the noise The soap and water dripped from Frisks face and onto her dress as she stared at the massive skeleton who was blocking the exit as well as (name) moving the hair from her eyes. Frsik didnt even realize her mouth was open until the taste of bitter and slippery liquid soap burned her tongue. She quickly closed her lips and backed away from the skeleton.

His hands were in his pockets as he looked (name) up and down, his smile growing by the second. His gold tooth glittered menacingly against the bathroom lights. He took a step towards them.

No...please Frisk thought as she held her hands up in a weak attempt to create some kind of barrier between herself and the monster that was at least two heads taller than her while (name) took a step forwad ready to fight her eyes narrowed.

There was only one reason why a straight man would enter the womens bathroom and Frisk learned what it was when she first starting singing. The man who had attacked was big too. He had grabbed her and shoved her up against the stalls doors and would have done so much more if it hadnt been for a (name) looking for Frisk. that was the day Frisk saw for the first time her big sisters anger in full force the anger in her eyes was just terrifying. blood flying, bloody fists the man left a bloody pulp as one of the women comming in to use the rest room ran to get security to "remove" the man while Frisk held onto her sister beggin her to stop that he had enough.

Frisk opened her mouth to scream for help, but the music from the jazz band blasted through the door, letting Frisk know that her chance for calling for help and actually having someone hear her was gone.

She looked up at him and tried to smile at him. She didnt know what she was gonna say to try and talk him out of the thing he was going to do to her. And through her mind-numbing fear she actually took a second to wondered how a skeleton could do something like that. But she wasnt curious enough to find out.

Look mister, I dont want any trouble-

Frisk stopped her sentence, groaning in fear as the skeleton took his hands out of his pockets and reached into his jacket.

"Frisk I think I left my purse behind the bar would you mind going and looking for it?"

To be continued....

(hey guys this took a lot of courage for me to post this. It's a more updated version than in quotev and watt pad just a few tweeks. I hope you all enjoy this and let me know in the comments how you feel about this)