#got bluescreen and lost everything at one point too

[bh-l]

txt, the name chapter: temptation daydream vs nightmare

[alipeeps]

Episode 40 (aka Hold me, I am not ready for this!! 😭)

Gods I think I love Xue Li almost as much as Xiao Heng.

And that dude loves her a LOT.

LOOK at how he looks at her. LOOK!!

"Kill Xiao Heng and we'll live happily ever after"... dude, you have completely lost touch of reality. How can you believe for even a fraction of a second that she'd do that, that she'd choose you over him? She just told you a moment ago that she'd rather die with him that be with you.

YES XUE LI!!! Put the next one through his eye please!

Actually no, don't kill him. Let him live and suffer and regret.

"Killing you would dirty my hands." You tell him girl. He's nothing. He's not worth the blood on your hands.

I reckon 75% chance he's gonna throw himself off the battlements anyway. Coward.

Ahahahaaaa he's standing on the edge! Am I right? Am I?

CALLED IT!! 😂😂

Last thing he saw was her walking away. Love that for him.

Ooooh she's gonna cut her own throat on the sword....

Shiiit where's that tumblr image of apollo's dodgeball? I'm getting too good at this.

There goes your last leverage, shithead.

Aaaaand there goes your ability to breathe anything other than blood.

Yeah baby, get your revenge.

Ey up, the wind machine's back.

Hahahaa fucking hell grandpa Xiao making Xiao Heng serve him drinks on the excuse that he was injured saving Xue Li?! I'm pretty sure Xiao Heng was actually *more* injured - he took at least 3 sword slashes in the battle with Lord Cheng!

Okay but now I am really intruiged/worried cos the rebellion is over and there's like 30-odd minutes (and the much giffed scene of Xiao Heng in his armour with the pendant in his teeth) left to go so... wtf is gonna happen now?

Oooh Xiao Heng's going north to protect the border...

Bros 4eva!

Daddy Xue's back? For reals?

"She's got a husband now, how can she go back with us?" 😂

Awww and she's got daddy's approval for this one too! 😁

What do you think she means, Su Guogong, you dumbass? You gotta make that place fit for a wife! 😁

Hahaha Xiao Heng has bluescreened again!

It's kinda disturbing how rare it is in a cdrama for the main couple to get together, both survive and get to happily marry. HOWEVER... there's still 20 minutes and that scene to go!! 😭😭

Also am i the only one that keeps getting very nervous about the combination of wind machine, billowing drapes, and naked flame candles... 😬

Is she gonna admit to pappa Jiang that she's not Jiang Li? I'm pretty sure he already knows...

Yeeeeeah that's a nice lie Xue Li but it's a lie nonetheless. She did suffer and she was in pain. But okay...

I want this to be between you and me - and all the servants that just overheard our conversation.

Shit I thought for a second there he'd stroked out and died on the spot! 😂

This feels like she's saying goodbye to the Jiang family for good. She's married into the Xiao family now and the Jiang family are leaving the capital... and she's not really related to them, she's got no real reason to see them again...

Shijie is just too goddamn good and precious.

Ooft one thing that bugs me about the subs in this is that they don't properly translate titles/honorifics, they translate everything to the person's name. So the significance of her calling him ge is entirely lost to anyone who doesn't understand at least a little bit of Chinese.

(Also they do this with single syllable names which is even more egregious. They translate didi as Zhao, they don't even have the fucking courtesy to make it A-Zhao)

Awww I am sad that the haircombing scene was just her imagination... and I'm also worried that it's some kind of portent... 😭

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO THEY KILLED LU JI!!!! 😭😭😭😭

I don't deserve this. After 40 episodes i do not deserve this how could you do this to me

Okay but Wen Ji I feel you fam I really do but Xiao Heng needs help!!

YOU BASTARDS!!

WHYYYYYYYYY??!! WHY DID YOU HAVE TO DO THIS TO ME?!! Why could they not just have a happy ending? What plot purpose does this even serve at this point?

Oh thank fuck I genuinely thought it was gonna end with it implying he was about to die on the battlefield.

I am dead. RIP me.

This was a fucking RIDE and I LOVED IT.

(Apart from them killing Lu Ji and Wen Ji for no reason 😭😭😭)

[mewintheflesh-2]

More Nightsky Headcanons but literally only of Nikey (wow haven’t called him that in awhile) except for the last headcanon which is something else.

Wow I haven’t done one of these in awhile. I feel like I’ve almost said everything there is to say at this point? Idk

I feel like after a while of being stuck in the alternate reality of his failures, Nightsky just wants to go home. No matter how hard he tries to deny it, he’s homesick. He wants so badly just to go home and curl up in his bed. But he can’t. He’s stuck here. Forever.

I think he’s just grateful that at the very least, he still has some of his Pokémon left with him.

Sometimes when his mind just won’t let him rest, he likes to just go out and sit on his balcony, taking a light blanket with him and wrapping it around him as he stares thoughtlessly at the barely visible stars in the city night sky. The biting cold of the night helps him feel present in the moment. His Pokémon are usually woken up by his movements and will come sit with him on the balcony, a few cuddling up to him as well.

I think he’d have a secret admirer or two on his apartment floor and at the bar he regulars at.

That’s right, light alcoholism. Yippie!!!!

He’d open up his apartment door to see a heart shaped box of chocolates and be like “………… huh????”

Is very confused when people try to flirt with him because he forgot that yes, he is very much physically here on this place where he’s not supposed to be and other people can see him outside of small interactions. I think the first time it happened he just bluescreened. Need I remind you he still sorely misses Winona with all his heart.

Of course if this was when he was still back at his home, he would likely either ignore them or flirt back. But he’s almost an entirely different person. The scars and scabs of his past ripped and torn right off his skin. Very, very emotionally vulnerable.

He just needs a hug and some therapy

I also think he’s just afraid to be in a relationship again with anybody. He messed it up so badly last time, why risk doing it again?

Also, I just don’t think he’d make for a great partner, atleast for the long term. He’s got shit he needs to sort out on his own first

If you’d listen to Tongues and Teeth by the Crane Wives you’d kind of get the gist of how he’d be in a relationship with someone in his current state, or at least how he was before he failed the Time Travel.

I think at some point he’d try to get together with someone, but he just ends up not being able to handle it and has to break it off.

He wouldn’t admit it, but it’s nice to know at least one person in this world cares about him in some way.

I think he’d be good at playing the piano. I think he’d use it as a sort of way to get lost in something and vent out his emotions. He’s got great vocals too. I think he’d even write a few of his own songs, gaining a little bit of a cult-following.

ALSO

He’s got pointy teeth :)

ALSO ALSO!! Winona’s colleagues name is Corrie I think

[writingforatwistedworld]

Phantom bride event-Seeing you in formal wear (suit/wedding dress/whatever) Pt. 4

My dear French-speaking readers, it's your time to shine and correct me. (Two words: Google translate)

Characters: Cater Diamond, Azul Ashengrotto, Rook Hunt

Self-aware au

I do not take any responsibility for you reading this no matter which age group you are from!

WARNINGS: Yandere themes, murder, death, unhealthy mindset, unhealthy relationship, kidnapping, war, violence, poison

My friend over here curses in his head about the situation of not being able of taking a photo

It's not like he would have shared it

After all, sometimes some moments are so precious that we want them only for ourselves

So here is Cater, fuming about not being able to add another photo into the album on his phone whilst you are swearing your undying love to princess over there

And then he bluescreens

Cater.exe has stopped working please restart

Wait, you are swearing your love to her? HER??!!

Don't ask me how but Cater would have butchered the lady if it weren't for the situation... and the fact that she is a ghost

He has made sure that you saw him in a good light the day you looked down upon him (aka installed the game)

And now his entire careful planning was for nothing??!

Nu-uh! Not under his watch!

Yells from afar “Is that the one you want as your partner? Look at her! She is just a pile of bones in reality! She is dead!”

Everything to stop you from completing that vow

All I'm saying to this is, hey, have you seen Idia? Yeah he is also screaming in panic because of two things he just wants to live

When all of this is done Cater will burn the clothing you wore for this problem

No one is allowed to stain his dream! No friend of his! No annoying stranger! And especially no annoying princess which is way too spoiled!

If he could move then the first thing he would do is to throw the wedding cake which is standing besides him at missy

“Don't play with your food Azul!” Mom! This is a completely different situation! MY LIMITED EDITION OVERSEER!!!

Also: *sad octopus noises*

He isn't even trying to uphold that “untouchable businessman” facade, just full on sobbing octopus

Can you please fry him something later? I... I think he needs it

Azul has dreamed of being someone worthy of your attention for a long time at this point of life

He lost weight, learned to gain just a smothered of your knowledgedge and yet he seems to have achieved nothing

Just hug him, ok? Do it for me, ok? P... please? ;_;

I mean, he is literally a puddle, signing, crying, getting his eyes dried with a handkerchief from one of the princesses more soft-hearted soldiers

It's as if he has been thrown back into his childhood

Azul is there, only able to watch but not capable of doing something against the insults

Because he is just born differently

But uh... ever thought about looking for a house in the dark dark sea?

Why? Oh well, this might have been the last straw for him and... you know, that fin-into-leg thingy also works in reverse

Do you want to meet other merpeople though? Oh uh... why are they suddenly gone? This was once a bustling village! (You are in the middle of nowhere where only one house stands. Whatever floats... sinks your ship Azul)

But at least you got a life of which many dream of! A loving husband, a beautiful home and a curse which shackles you to him. Wait.. no, correct??! You can't leave him forever.

Ohboyohboyohboyohboyohboy

Peace? Safety? A life without a bow within your surroundings?

What is this? Not self-aware au for all I know

This means guerre!

Every single deer shot, every single bunny caught in a trap was just preparation and practice for this moment

If it weren't for the teeny tiny fact that, well, his enemies are ghosts. Vieilles âmes. Des ennuis embêtants!

Yeah, arrow and bow are kinda useless

There he is, one of the unfrozen ones, one of the possible candidates for signing the deal after this

You two are already wearing the clothing for it so...

But then there is also madame Boudin* Bleue and hE wIlL nOt AcCePt A rInG wHicH iS nOt FoR hIm On ThE hAnD oF aNoThEr

Once more: guerre!

But a verbal one this time

That one way too complicated poem he made up to the guard in the beginning? Those skills were thrown over board and drowned pretty fast

Full blown screaming, threats and not a single indicator that he is from Pomefiore

If Snow White was his suave-ness and he the fairest queen then he wouldn't have poisoned her but just straight off chopped her head off

I would start to learn how to unlock even the complicated of locks at this point. You know, for that cottage that has o many of them in the middle of the woods to which he will drag you after all of this

*I was told that Boudin means in a more insulting way “ugly” so don't think I mean the sausage XD

[alittlebirb]

Some vicarious victories from the MCC 23 Orange Ocelots!

Quig for some reason believing Aqua Axolotls wasn't a team this MCC, suggesting that perhaps NoxCrew switches it up every so often??? Sir???

"Considering I've looked at a monitor my entire life, I might need glasses. But if I never go to the eye doctor, I'll never know!" -Quig

Quig talking about how he likes taste tasting energy drinks like the gamer he is

Martyn detailing how he's at a disadvantage for half of the games in this event, and Eret reassuring him last time she didn't even watch the video before playing MD and her team ended up winning!

Eret asking Quig if he'd like to be an honorary British person for the event, and Quig replying "Um...I don't know."

Eret designating him British because he's part Scottish and Quig asking for sadges in the chat

The three of them having an extended talk about accents

"I have a mute button, so I can give that a quick press every time I'm coughing up a lung." -Martyn

"I may have destroyed our team morale, because I met Finn at Twitch Con the other day and absolutely destroyed him at this weird shuffleboard game, so I don't think we're on the best of talking terms right now." -Martyn

Eret mentioning how they used to watch Martyn when they were 10, and Quig also saying he used to watch Martyn as a kid, and Martyn being hit with a wave of ohmygodI'vebeendoingthisfor11years

"I'm all for being bossed around, feel free to use my ears." -Martyn

Finn not unmuting until they're literally a minute into the decision dome

Everyone agreeing cakes are The Strat in SG

Quig talking about how he was sent an orange ocelot by Mojang a while ago, and Eret being taken aback at the flex

Finn and Eret joining forces as the crop top wearers

Martyn complaining Finn said he was going to cosplay him, he stole half of his clothes at Twitch Con and everything!

Everyone being disgusted at the Mike Wazowski skins Lime have on, although Quig acknowledges how impressive it is they got a skin for Antfrost so quickly

Everyone bullying Finn for looking like Vector from Despicable Me

Eret reflecting on how the rule about continuing the event if a player takes too long started because of that one time he bluescreened during SOT

"Thank you for killing Elaina for me." -Eret

Eret and Martyn gaslighting Quig into believing British people say 'evelator' instead of 'elevator'

Quig making sure that Finn is very clear on the fact they have to activate the elytra in AR now

"Listen, I don't know if you need a carry on this one, but not to brag, one time I got 38th." -Finn

Martyn getting mistaken for Phil many times during Twitch Con, to the point even Fundy mistook him at one point

"Oh, I've fallen." -Martyn

"And I can't get up? :D" -Quig

Quig noting CPK got first place, and Martyn predicting that'll be in his All Things MCC highlights video

"How tall are you Quig?" -Finn

"Six foot." -Quig

"...Okay someone else go." -Finn

Everyone weird dunking on CPK's team when Quig goes straight for him

"I got the dunk and I knew what I needed to do." -Quig

Quig mentioning his girlfriend is knocking everything over, and Eret taking no prisoners and asking if his girlfriend's a cat

"I'm not that lonely, Eret! Jeez!" -Quig

"Jeez, I'm not that lonely! It's a dog." -Martyn

Quig mentioning he has 4 dogs, Eret saying that's too many dogs, and Quig saying actually, that's ~four~ many dogs

"Does Sapnap's skin have nipples?" -Martyn

Martyn discussing the his pattern of dodgebolts, as he's been in dodgebolt twice before, both times on Orange, both times he's lost, and both times a teammate did a wildly improbable shot

Quig removing his shades, which then prompts Eret to demonstrate how she can transform into Herobrine with a single click of a button

"I'm being gaslit this entire MCC, I thought I was supposed to trust me teammates!" -Quig

"Have you ever played in this event before?" -Martyn

"A- almost all of them!" -Quig

Finn explaining that he keeps muting because he's just screaming and doesn't want to ruin their streams

Eret's stats reading that they eliminated 0 players and 1 teammate in SB

Quig inadvertantly killing Finn in the next round by placing a block, and Martyn dying to his TNT later on

"Man, we are great at team killing!" -Eret

Martyn being disappointed at the lack of employees manning the Burgers But Fast stand, and asking "what are we not paying the NoxCrew for?"

Martyn giving his dark unhinged theories on Spongebob's crabby patty recipe

Eret pointing out a fan with a L'Manburg skin for being outdated

Orange winning against Red in PKT in a stunning bit of foreshadowing

"Something possessed me today, I've never played like that in my life." -Martyn

3 OF THEM MAKING IT INTO THE TOP 5 PLAYERS

Martyn saying he's beginning to Covid Crash and Quig advising him to get his wife to get him a 5 hour energy

"Ever since I took my glasses off, we've been doing great!" -Quig

Finn comparing his eyes to a "creature", and calling Quig's "uncanny valley"

Eret doing breathing exercises to calm themselves down for RSR

Quig saying if they follow him on the bridging TGTTOS maps, they'll get the team bonuses...hopefully..."knock on wood. *knock knock knock*"

"I'm on the struggle bus, boys." -Martyn

Eret seeing Elaina struggle to finish and typing <L> in the chat

Elaina seeing Eret struggle to finish and putting <L> in the chat

"Follow Bedwars man!" -Finn about Quig

The slowly building realization that they could actually go to DB!

Quig repeating the whole way through that communication is where it's at! Communication is what we need!

Finn constantly having wardrobe and technological malfunctions throughout MD

The incredible communication during MD, with Orange winning two rounds in a row!

Everyone letting out a harmonized "woo!" after the second round

Quig shaking in fear when entering the coin room and asking for someone to hold his hand

"Come on Antfrost, I love you buddy but you gotta lose!" -Finn

3 of them ending up in the Top 5 players again!

The SCREAMING when they realize they're in DB!

"The rags to riches story!" -Finn

"Already, I feel my pulse in my throat." -Martyn

"I'm out of breath, even though this is Minecraft!" -Eret

"I've got cold sweats and goosebumps, and I'm not sure which one's Covid!" -Martyn

"Covid symptoms remarkably similar to Dodgebolt nerves." -Finn

Finn hurting his hand from how hard he clapped when they won a round

"Thank you very much for the vibes today boys!" -Martyn

Eret and Quig saying they had to help their childhood hero win

"Is this just calling me old, we have to help the old man with his Zimmerman up the stairs?" -Martyn

"It was payback for the years of entertainment." -Quig

Finn running past the team in the Hall Of Fame while they stand in front of their statues and everyone screaming at him that they're right there! Right here!

Martyn clarifying that it was not his wife who ran in screaming happily, he has Covid, she would not do that

Martyn planning on buying a "thicc chain" to put the MCC coin on

Quig deciding to put the coin on his Orange Ocelot stuffed animal

Orange Ocelots finished MCC 23 in 1st place!

[elfdyke]

wow thanks! that was a really in depth post about it you make good points! when I played I definitely got the sense that monika had encouraged sayori to kill herself and I didn’t get the sense of any remorse when natsuki or yuri died or got fucked up but I guess u do make some good points there about how she was just trying to make them less desirable rather than kill them. I’m new to the game and the fandom so im not super familiar with everything yet but is there anything in the canon or lore that points away from monika having pushed sayori to commit suicide or is it mostly just fan theories and personal readings? either way thank u so much for answering!

yes i can absolutely find you some info on that!

there's quite a bit of information hidden within the games files, so I'm kind of assuming if you're new to the game, that you might not have seen these things? so ill dive into them too!

I'm gona do this under the cut so i can like, dissect things from the game !

(also i found stuff thats specifically pointing away from her meaning actual harm/death for Both yuri and sayori, jsyk)

iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.txt (discovered in game files during act 2)

“All I want is for you to hate them. Why is that so hard.”

not, all i want for them is to die. she doesnt want to kill them. she wants to separate us from them so we are with Her, not them. things spiral out of control, but it was never her intention for things to get this bad. ntm its repeated over and over in this game how badly monika wants to die. she's hanging on by a thread, keeping on only because she wants to be with us, to be in contact with reality. this leads to really unfortunate circumstances but i really strongly believe everything in the text alludes to the fact she did Not want things to get this bad

ACT 3 INTRO:

(im copy pasting a transcript of the monologue here, but this is taken from the very beginning of act 3, which you can see in this video starting at 25:56)

imo this is all the proof needed to show that she really had no intention of ‘killing’ sayori and yuri. things spiraled out of control far beyond what she was capable of handling. 

her goals with making sayori more depressed and yuri more obsessive were, in here words “to just try to make them as unlikable as possible”. she didnt want her friends to brutally die!! she loved them q_q i feel like a lot of people really dont look at this specific part of what she says and take it to heart. its very telling for her character and important for understanding what she does and why she does it

ACT 3 MONOLOGUES:

sayori's hanging (cw: graphic descriptions of suicide)

dialogue of importance:

"I was thinking about Sayori earlier... I still wish I could have handled that whole thing a little more tactfully."

+

"Come to think of it, it was probably less 'changing her mind' and more just her survival instincts kicking in." "So you can't really fault her for that." "It's easier to think that she probably wouldn't have changed her mind anyway, right?" "It's not healthy to think about the things you could have done differently." "So just remember that even though you could have saved her, it's technically not your fault she killed herself." "I may have exacerbated it a little bit, but Sayori was already mentally ill." "Still, though..." "I wonder how things would be if you and I just started dating from the get-go?" "I guess we'd all still be in the clubroom, writing poems and having fun together." "But what's the point when none of it is even real?" "I mean, it's the same ending either way, right?"

ok so whats important here, is monika is essentially using us, the player, as a mirror in act 3? the things she says i believe, very strongly show her sense of uncertainty in her actions, and her fears of what if she could have done something else??

"even though you could have saved her, its technically not your fault she killed herself" reads SO much to me like shes trying to comfort herself with this, she doesnt want it to be her fault. nothings real, sayori's a character in a game. but she wishes so badly they could have just been normal girls living together.

happy end poem

OK SO LIKE. this is actual proof of Why she does everything she does. she's scared if she reaches out and tells us she's trapped in a game, we'll stop playing, we'll kill her. she tinkers with the game, trying to make herself look the best, trying to make us choose her, and nothing works. and this leads to her becoming frustrated and scared, and screwing with the game more and more desperately trying to do anything to save herself.

if you recall, in act 2, she gives you a poem which bluescreen the computer. this was actually an attempt she makes to escape the game q_q she never wanted to kill yuri, she never wanted things to escalate like that. she wanted to get out but she had no idea how to program her way out of the game, resulting in everything crumbling around her, and her friends dying.

my own route

hang on this one genuinely makes me so upset.

it very much relates back to how in the conversation about sayori's suicide, she's still clearly thinking about how things could be Different. shes thinking about how they could be normal. "I may not have needed to take such drastic measures to be with you. Maybe the rest of the club would still be around..." , and then immediately trying to convince herself it doesnt matter, and that she doesnt care.

its so so obvious shes hurting and she misses her friends. the additional "i really dont (miss them)" at the end really shows that shes desperately trying to convince herself that it was worth it, that she did everything she should have, and her friends dont matter. but they clearly do matter to her. she loved them (she couldnt even delete them if u recall)

also another important part about this monologue, a lot of people say she killed the other girls out of jealousy, but this shows thats not true??

"I think I would end up forcing you onto my route anyway." "It has less to do with me not having a route, and more to do with me knowing that nothing is real."

this wasnt because shes 'in love' with us. she wanted to be close to something real, something tangible. she's clinging onto us, the player character, like someone lost at sea with a piece of driftwood, doing everything she can to stay afloat

wine

ok this isnt on the surface level as important as the other ones, but literally look at how she talks about this memory.. she misses them so much and talking about this memory she clearly cherishes brings her so much joy. she doesnt belittle any of them, she doesnt talk down on them, she’s just reliving this memory because it makes her happy 

I HOPE THIS HELPS?? im sure theres a few more things im forgetting, but i did my best to scrabble up everything i could to show how monika’s not an evil mastermind, shes a scared girl who didnt realize what she was doing and when things got too bad, she did her best to fix it, only for it to get worse n worse

edit: oh heres the proof that monika always loved the girls and never actually deleted them

:’)

edit 2: haha.. um ouch

“It’s not right for me to miss things that weren’t even real in the first place.” shes forcing herself to try and ignore her feelings for the other girls

[sylph-feather]

Summary: Danny had known the rules— that being beaten would lead to transfer of the crown, instructed to him by their ominous guardians— but he hadn’t exactly considered all the implications of that.

For: @ghost-strawberry

Prompt: (Danny is ghost king hc) Danny loses a fight with Sam and the title of ghost king is transferred to her, despite Sam not being a ghost.

Words: 3,344

“Haha!” Sam barked triumphantly, standing over her defeated enemy in a display of dominance while stomping a scary combat boot, “I won.” 

Danny let out nothing but a low keening sound, slumping on the Nasty Burger table and leaving his arm in its defeated position. 

“Darn,” Tucker chimed in, “I thought that with all the ghost fighting and workouts you’ve been doing, Sam finally would stop being the reigning arm wrestling champ.” He paused, melodramatically draping a hand over his forehead and intoning, “alas.” 

Danny only repeated the same mournful noise, all the sentiment of my arm is going to bruise and Sam will never let this go packed into a drawn out moan. 

Before Danny could construct his complaints into something that took the form of language, there was a great burst of green fire that ensconced their cheap, plastic table. In the time it took to flinch, the ghostly flames had already washed over the group— and… done… nothing? 

No, that wasn’t right— it hadn’t hurt them, to be more accurate. Their table, and the tile around it, looked like someone had carved a circle into the floor, taken everything within that circle (read: the trio, several overly greasy foodstuffs, and three shakes) and dropped it right into the Ghost Zone, if the swirling green abyss was anything to go by. 

(Back in the human realm, the patrons of the Nasty Burger were left with their own overly greasy foodstuffs visible in their mouths held ajar as they stared at the smoldering circle that once held three teens and cheap fast food chain restaurant seating— horribly cheap plastic booths on a table that maybe had the suggestion of meeting bare-minimum sanitary requirements. A lone green flame died out, and acrid smoke wafted away. Same shit every day, a tired cashier thought). 

Before them: the Coroners. Dark-colored ghosts with a litany of dark colors with glowing green antlers that twisted into the suggestion of the shape of a crown, and gnarled hands that all had the same mark of a skull on each knuckle. Between the name and the appearance, they were very ominous, to say the least. 

Danny recognized them from the last time he met them: his own coronation. 

Sam and Tucker, who were not there for that ritual because it occured after the fight with Pariah, were just as confused and scared as Danny was the first time. “It’s ok!” he yelped at his friends who were readying their on-hand Fenton weaponry. “I know them. They’re the Coroners.”

Sam shot him a look that said that is anything but encouraging, and Danny winced. 

“They… do… the coron-ing,” Danny said slowly, because he didn’t know how else to phrase it. “Like, the monarchy ruler stuff.” 

“Down with the monarchy,” Sam intoned almost instinctively, but still pocketed the lipstick laser once again, settling down and taking a more casual sip of her strawberry shake. 

Tucker, meanwhile, just kept his shaky hands locked around the box of fries, determinedly not looking at the wraith-like creatures that had deer skulls sticking out of dark garb. 

Sam paused in her slurping, considering the Coroner’s job in her mind more thoroughly. “I guess it makes sense, ‘cuz the Ghost Zone doesn’t have a pope to do it,” she admitted. 

Tucker relaxed, and snorted. “Ghost pope.” The idea (mixed with the special breed of hysterical comedy that comes with  stress) elicited great humor. 

Fear abandoned, now they just looked confused. Danny was too— because, “why are you here?” He frowned down at himself. “Are you, uh, rebelling? Or do you have an important message? Or…?”

That was one-third of the Coroner’s jobs: rebellion. Or, more accurately, inciting rebellion. To understand, one must understand two-thirds of their job: the second third was that someone had to pass down the Ring of Rage and Crown of Fire. After the defeat of Parkah, the ancient ghosts were very grateful that Danny had taken it from Pariah Dark after his reign of tyranny, given that he had destroyed them… because of the first third of their job. See, the Coroners were also supposed to act as some representative electoral body of ghost-kind in deciding who passed a somewhat okay-ish ruler, and if that didn’t work out, they usually incited rebellion against said tyrant, or inevitably did so when a once kind ruler became glutted with greed and violence. 

So Pariah trapped them, which (admittedly) was a rather sensible plan, and (also admittedly) a major design flaw in the ring and the crown. After all, given the requirement for the initial rights to ring and crown were to battle and defeat its previous user to gain access (it could be peacefully passed, but that option had never happened), and really, nothing of the Coroner’s judgement would make an impact outside of someone saying no— that is to say, the ring and crown wouldn’t just poof. Thus, it seemed reasonable to assume that the battler would continue, well, battling for that power. 

The last third of their job is significantly less exciting— as Danny put it: messaging. It simply was to act as ghostly servants; knights, mailmen, whatever the King and the ghosts that needed the King may require. Danny largely told them to use their own discretion in solving conflicts, because he was just one teen barely keeping his grades above Cs, and then left them to it. 

So yes, Danny was kind of worried that somehow, such a dramatic summons would be some kind of ominous warning on the way he was being a king— which, to be fair, he was barely being a king at all— due to the aforementioned second-third of their job.

The largest one with the most elaborately twisted antlers pointed a long, bony finger at Sam. Its voice, which sounded both grand and incredibly spooky, boomed thusly: “this human has bested you in battle. Thusly, according to the sacred laws of the Ring of Rage and the Crown of Fire, she shall be bequeathed the title of ghostly monarch. Ye, Danny Phantom, halfa, who have bested Pariah Dark, have lost to Sam Manson, human, and cede your title as ruler.” 

In a circle, the thirteen wraiths whispered, “and the cycle continues.” It was murmured slightly out of sync, but it gave less of an impression of untidiness or lack of professionalism, and more of an ominous feeling, like there were many more voices than just thirteen. 

Danny was slightly less freaked out than Sam and Tucker by it, given they had said a similar thing when he was coronated, but with far less spooky fanfare, and more normal, excited fanfare. Mostly, Danng was spooked more by the suddenness of the thing, and the prospect of it. 

In the hands of the largest one that was clearly the leader, the Ring of Rage and the Crown of Fire appeared in a dramatic swooshing of green flame. 

Danny’s eyes widened. “She.” He paused, because he couldn’t really argue with that. It was— technically, sort of— a battle. And in the Ghost Zone, might made right and all that. Still. 

Sam and Tucker stared, jaws agape. Between all the new info and now this revelation, their brains essentially bluescreened. 

Danny, even though he was previously initiated, wasn’t in a much better state— all he managed to get out aloud was an incredulous, “it was arm wrestling?”  

One of the smaller wraiths, its crown of horns barely nubs, drifted forwards to their Nasty Burger island that was adrift in the Ghost Zone, and asked in its voice of crackling dead leaves, “is this the manner in which you were beaten?” 

Sam, herself, recovered from the mental “404” page, and her first reaction was to release a huge guffaw of laughter. 

Danny slid forwards onto the table, thoroughly spent between embarrassment and confusion. All he articulated was a very, very long groan. 

“May we, uh,” Danny said slowly, turning towards the head wraith and looking at the glowing points set in the skull’s sockets, “have a moment to discuss?” 

Tucker made a vague noise between worry and agreement. 

“So long as the queen wishes,” it bowed to her, deeply reverent. 

“Wait,” Sam ordered, smile growing on her face. “If I were queen,” she said slowly, “would I be able to get rid of this monarchy?” 

“Tis not a monarchy, my lady,” one of the thirteen said, antler crown bobbing. 

The whole table of teens processed this for a moment. 

Tucker burst into incredulity first: “you literally called her a monarch just a few seconds ago!” 

“A title, nothing more,” a Coroner corrected. “Nay, you do not hold much sway over them, rather, it is they who hold sway over you, sending message to help resolve conflicts, be they fullscale fights or quarrels.” 

Danny groaned, suppressed memories bubbling up: the many times the Coroners had come to him with arguments regarding ghost territories, many attempting to use Danny as a weapon or a diplomat or bodyguard or— so on. 

Thus far, a handful of months into his kinghood, Danny had stopped one “fullscale fight” that bordered on a war. (...This was also related to territory, however). 

Either way, that was a long way to say: the statement that it was just a title held up. The ring and crown didn’t actually really get him any political leeway with the ghosts— it was more of an… intimidation tactic that some ghosts fled from, because the ring and the crown were no more than power boosters. 

Asides from that, all he got were updates on all the troubles in the Zone that supposedly needed him (most of which actually didn’t). The Ghost Zone was a lawless place, so a title of king was not worth much outside of sheer power display. 

For the most part, the things had just served to place a target on his back, specifically, because any lost battle would mean they were his no more, and that the power would be passed to the victor. 

Sam, seemingly on the same line of thought as he, hummed, “would ghosts know I was the… Ghost Queen?” At declaring herself monarch (even if it was apparently in name only), her face did a bit of an involuntary, complicated twisting motion. 

Danny picked himself up from his pathetic slump, and aimed an intrigued-but-confused look at Sam. 

Tucker caught on a bit faster— “so if the ghosts think Danny’s still the king, they fight him— but there’s no risk involved in him losing.” 

Sam nodded, smiling a little sappily. 

Danny just made a mushy “aw,” sound, seeming to consider it. 

It was hard to read the expressions of the ghosts that surrounded the trio’s private, floating chunk of the Nasty Burger establishment, because said ghosts wore skulls… but they seemed baffled, though reluctantly accepting. It was all in the tilt of their heads and the pause of their voice as they said, “great Queen, whatever thou shall ask of us.” 

Sam nodded again, then paused. Her face cracked into an eager grin— a dangerous grin. “Do I get cool powers from this?” 

After receiving the crown, Danny had gotten a boost in his own powers; nothing new, just everything that was there was doubled. Double the size, the intensity, the spookiness, the everything. Needless to say, being goth and being active in fights as she was, Sam was excited for ghost powers. She was momentarily lost in visions of a sweeping gothic outfit, one of pure black with smokey edges, decked out in spikes, etcetera— in other words, “edgy.” 

Tuck, meanwhile, had a far more practical askance: “hold on. She’s a human, right?” 

Of course, it wouldn’t be the first instance of humans vaguely receiving or being influenced by ghost powers in some way; Undergrowth had done it, there had been that time with ghost mosquitos, and the one with that Egyptian staff, and the whole incident with the dragon-rage amulet… not to mention the halfas themselves, obviously. Still, it was not all that hope-inspiring to consider that all of them save for the halfas were essentially some degree of possession (or, at the least, something infectious and negative). 

Aloud, Tucker continued to contemplate. “It’s not exactly reassuring to call them ghost powers, with uh, death. Involved.” It was a choppy sentence, but it got the point across; Danny was a special case, but even a half death wasn’t exactly desirable. 

The glowing eyes of the coroners seemed to wink in amusement, insomuch as points of light could display emotion. “Ghost powers , says the queen.” 

“Ghost powers,” the others echo— not ominous this time, because they are chortling, seeming to be one step away from elbowing one another. 

Sam flushes a bit. “What’s so funny about that?” she grunts, offended. 

The coroners all bow deeply. “We meant no offense,” speaks one from the crowd, and it is followed by a wave of nodding before any of the trio can tell which one was even talking. “We simply find hilarity on your naivete.” 

“Elaborate,” she ordered with extremely thin patience.

“We were hasty in calling you the monarch yet,” the largest explained in its ancient, crackling voice, slow and thoughtful— annoyingly so. 

Sam pinches her nose, understanding with perfect clarity why Danny had complained dealing with these pretentious, cryptic weirdos. “Elaborate,” she commanded once again. 

“You are not the monarch yet, because you have not died,” it informed with great solemnity. 

The Nasty Burger chunk floated in stunned silence as the trio absorbed that. 

“Die?!” Tucker yelled, banging the table, upsetting both the fries and the silence. 

“You have a fascinating and naive way of phrasing it, but perhaps ghost powers is not so far from the truth,” one of the antlered creatures mused, not really addressing the obvious tension or concern. “For indeed, the ring and the crown do power the spiritual energy—“ 

“They’re just ghost batteries!” Danny interrupted, baffled and surprised. 

Sam herself then interrupted the interruption with a scoff, creating a horrible stack of domino-ing interruptions. “All this pizazz over just a power source that I can’t even use?” 

“You are incapable of using it as you are now,” a coroner pointed out. Something in all their eyes glinted ominously, and their antlers seemed to shine with ethereal light. “You are disconnected while living,” one said. As a group, they began encircling the private bit of Nasty Burger, wraith-like cloaks brushing against disgusting tile that was glossy with grease of burgers long past. “But we will fix that,” the coroners intoned as one. 

Danny finally took some initiative, fluidly erupting from his seat and transforming into Phantom in a singular motion. It felt just a tad ridiculous to he hovering over a Nasty Burger table that was ridiculously out of place in the abyssal green of the Ghost Zone, but that only graced his mind for a moment. Instead, the primary thought was one he voiced aloud: “are you going to kill her?” Danny may have been a C student, but regarding threats he was not slow on the uptake— he’d been in enough fights to get a good instinct. For their part, Tuck and Sam took it too— partially cowering behind Danny while brandishing their own Fenton brand lasers. 

The dark spirits jolted to a stop, and tilting their many skull-heads quizzically— a nonverbal askance of why fight? All their minds were whirring, and the first theory from the group of coroners was this: “are you hungry for this power once again?” The group around chortled, a veritable cacophony like many dead leaves being kicked around by whistling wind. It was a taunt, clearly. “This is the natural order of things, halfa. You cannot deny it. You have lost. She has won, won spiritual power, power we take from you.” An enormous pressure of dread emanated from the threatening beings, seeming to push at Danny’s chest— it threw him off kilter in the emotional sense, but also the literal given that he was midair. “If you desire it returned to you, then beat her as she did you, as is the rites of the Ring and the Crown.” 

“I’m more upset she’s gonna die!” Danny barked, a little sarcastic and a lot tense, gesticulating wildly as though that could free his limbs from the lead of supernatural fear. As he did so, his hands became enveloped in his own charging ectoplasm— like a snowball dragged through snow to gather more icy slush to its mass, so too did Danny draw the pure ectoplasm from his surroundings. 

“I would like not to die,” Sam agreed quickly. 

“If it counts, I’m thirding that motion,” Tucker put in as well. 

The coroners pulled back, seemingly startled. “You… do not want this power. But you do not get to choose. ” Their antlers still held an ominous and powerful glow, which spoke to the fact that they had already made their choice in regards to the whole death thing. 

Sam drew in a breath, preparing her “hell no” tirade— when Danny exploded into motion, wrapping a gloved hand around Sam’s hand that didn’t have a lipstick laser in it, and propped them sloppily on the Nasty Burger table. He held his elbow on the table and their chained hands up. Before she could process what on earth he was doing, he painfully but desperately slammed their linked hands down against the table. 

Everyone was staring at Danny, ghosts and humans alike. Silence reigned— utterly baffled, confused silence. It was though a massive, unspoken huh? has slammed down onto the area. 

“There,” he said, reedy desperation coloring his voice. “I won the arm wrestle match.” 

Sam cottoned on pretty quickly— “oh no,” she groaned, “Danny, you beat me. You won .” 

Tucker shot her a look— the emphasis was a bit hammy— but said nothing, only watched hopefully as the coroners seemed to enter something of a loading state as they processed the turn of events. 

Then, startlingly, they quickly and fluidly bowed simultaneously. “Long live our shortest reigning queen,” they said with great solemnity, “and welcome back, our halfa King. Long may he reign.” 

Needless to say, the trio’s sigh of relief was about unparalleled. 

“If I am to reign,” Danny said slowly, recovering but still trying to sound poncy and official (rather than yell at them as he desired), “may we, in the future… discredit joking competitions?” It was delicately phrased, awkward pauses as he deliberately chose fancy phrasing, but it at least got the point across (even if Danny could swear that despite having skull faces and only pinpricks of light for eyes, the coroners were making faces at him). 

The coroners stares at each other, cloaks rustling but no sound passing between them. 

“Yes,” the largest said suddenly, “such a request is reasonable, for a half-human teenager.” With exasperation, it added: “you already were an exceptional case in your ruling.” 

“And in general,” a smaller one piped up snarkily from the back, to be shushed by what was likely a superior. 

“Right,” Danny clapped his hands together and huffed, relieved but still tense. 

“Now, how do we get out of here…?” Tucker questioned, trailing off and looking at the abyss. He traced his fingers on the table, then his face lit up— “uh, can I keep this? It’s authentic Nasty Burger merch, technically, and it’s nor like they’re really gonna need it when it’s been diverged from this reality, let alone their store—“

Before he could continue, there was a snap from one of the coroner’s gnarled hands, and a great bout of green flames engulfed said hunk of Nasty Burger— for the second time that day. 

When a very stunned Danny Fenton, Sam Manson, Tucker Foley, and smoldering, partially aflame  with emerald Nasty Burger chunk snapped back into place within the mortal realm, a certain cashier stared balefully at the fused tiles and remnant ghost flame, thought same shit every day once again, and promptly asked: “do you want more to order?” 

And thus, the status quo was restored, for better or for worse. 

[meliorist-midoriya]

doki doki todoroki

synopsis: where todoroki’s first love blindsides him and he feels like the whole class is leaving him out of the loop. 

word count: 1.8k

genre: fluff, fluff, and more fluff 

warnings: just todoroki being a clueless baby 

a/n: hello! aaaa this is entirely self-indulgent, but it’s my first post! i saw “doki doki todoroki” float around here somewhere and then this happened hjsdhjdhj. anyway, hope you enjoy!

He brushes it off the first time it happens, wrote it off as adrenaline from today’s sparring.

He brushes it off the second time. It was just a harmless scare after all, no shame in that.

He brushes it off the third time, the odd timing soon forgotten in favor of resuming his studies.

Todoroki doesn’t see the correlation for a while. How it was after seeing your exhilarated smile in the middle of a hard fight, after hearing you laugh once Mina startled him, after watching the triumphant smile on your face grow once he explained the problem to you.

He notices it the fourth, fifth, sixth time. Understandably, he’s confused. No amount of education or training would’ve prepared him for this. Nothing would’ve, other than hard-earned experience that he never got. Looking it up (as he found himself doing a lot these days the more he socialized) only earned him the definition of tachycardia and a grocery list of possible diagnoses ranging from anxiety to heart disease.

So much for the internet.

The ringing of the lunch bell pulled him out of his “research”, and he filed the thought away for later as he slipped his phone back into his pocket.

Later becomes three weeks.

Todoroki’s lost count at this point of how many times his heart suddenly went haywire, thudding against his ribs and sending blood rushing through his ears. How is world suddenly narrowed to just you whenever you spoke to him, and how he wanted to hear your voice again even though you had just stopped speaking. He finally drew the line once Midoriya pointed out his state of disarray at lunch.

“Todoroki-kun, are you sick? Your face is really red,” Midoriya had his chopsticks halfway to his mouth when he paused at the sight of Todoroki staring listlessly at his soba. Unbeknownst to him, Todoroki was too busy listening to you laugh at whatever Uraraka and Iida were talking about to focus on his soba. Hell, he couldn’t focus on anything lately and he had no idea why.

“Hm? Oh, yes, I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” No. He doesn’t voice this, and instead lets his Quirk pull the heat away from his cheeks for him as the air chills around him. Midoriya keeps watching him like he doesn’t believe him, but returns to his own lunch anyway.

“Hey, Todoroki, pfft- you have to listen to this. Iida just-” You don’t wait for his answer. You don’t have to. Todoroki finds himself hanging on to your every word anyway, smiling to himself (oh, the tiniest smile compared to yours. He doesn’t think anything will compare) as you struggle to recount your conversation without dissolving into giggles, Iida admonishing you for your loud laughter with an embarrassed flush.

Whatever this feeling is, he doesn’t mind, but he would like to know. He doesn’t notice Uraraka and Midoriya curiously watching the exchange, food forgotten. Nor does he notice Mina giggling with Hagakure as they nudged each other over the seats, dragging any of the class they could into their little whisper circle. The bell rings, and he already wishes you could’ve continued the story.

Later, you promise. He holds you to that.

Kaminari slings an arm over his shoulders in the locker room as they change into their hero costumes for afternoon classes, with Sero on his other side, and he stumbles from both shock and the added weight on him, his boot half-dangling from his foot.

“So, Todoroki-kun~” Kaminari’s lilting tone floating in from his right immediately sends his guard up, and he stared at him warily.

“How’s spring feeling for ya?” Sero continued from his left.

“…Isn’t it autumn right now?” Why were they talking about spring in the middle of October? Todoroki was too busy staring at Sero like he’d grown a second head to notice the collective silent groan ripple through the locker room.

“Oh my god, he really is clueless,” Kaminari whispers, Sero nodding along with a dumbstruck expression. He side-eyes them as he tugs his boot on the rest of the way, unamused. Clueless about what?

“Will he be okay?” It was Sero who spoke this time, completely ignoring the fact that they were having a conversation right over his head.

“I don’t know, man, he should be, right?”

“I’m literally right here. Did something happen?”

“A-Ah, nothing, nothing, just… checking up on you, you know?” As socially inept as he was, even he could recognize from a mile away that Kaminari was a terrible liar.

“…Why?” Okay, now he was really confused. He looked around the room to see if anyone could give him any hints, to no avail. Kirishima was too busy facepalming to notice his confusion, Ojiro was suddenly very interested in tying off his gi, and both Tokoyami and Bakugou were completely ignoring their antics. In a last attempt to figure out what the hell was even going on, he turned to Midoriya… who was trying to desperately look anywhere else other than at him. Something was up, and if Kaminari was involved, he didn’t have a good feeling about it.

“Y-You know, uh…” Kaminari was floundering for an answer, and sighed in relief once Iida came in to announce that they had five minutes to be ready. The pressure disappeared off his shoulders and Todoroki finished putting on the rest of his costume, the deep sense of unease tugging at the corner of his mind. There was something he wasn’t picking up on, and it felt like everyone but him knew.

He brushed it off to focus on class. Today was sparring day, after all, and Todoroki was partnered up with you. Maybe he’d see that smile again. The thought of it made fire lick at his fingers during the spar much quicker than usual.

He wasn’t disappointed, his heartbeat pounding in his ears even as the adrenaline fizzled out.

Tomorrow morning finds him face-to-face with a grinning Mina and an overexcited Hagakure outside the classroom before class starts, along with the answers to his plight way sooner than he expected. They had called out to him and, before he knew it, he was cornered against the window with their too-wide smiles beaming up at him, hungry for the romance gossip they had been chasing after all year. Or, well, he was pretty sure Hagakure was smiling, at least. Mina, on the other hand, resembled the Cheshire Cat too closely for his liking.

“You like Y/N, don’t you, Todoroki-kun?”

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t?” To say he was confused was an understatement, but there’d been a lot of that lately so he just came to accept it. “Y/N is a good person with an impressive Quirk, so-”

“No, not like thaaat!” Mina wailed, and Todoroki blinked owlishly at the two girls as they both lamented the “densest pretty boy of UA”. Their words, not his. Did… did he say something wrong?

“Like what, then?”

“Ro-man-tic-al-ly!”

Todoroki bluescreened.

“Ro…man…?”

“Like, do you always end up looking at her whenever you’re in the same room?” Hagakure was practically vibrating from excitement, “Do you always want to listen to her or be near her? Or does your heart go ‘doki doki’ whenever you’re with her?!”

“Doki…doki?” Todoroki‘s brain, still rebooting from earlier, struggled to process the onslaught of information Hagakure was slamming him with. So far, however, all the answers he came up with were ‘Yes. Yes. A million times, yes’. “I… guess something’s been wrong with my heart lately? I looked it up and it said it was nothing to worry about, so-”

“Something’s not wrong, dummy! It’s love! And Y/N likes you back!” Mina exclaimed, and both her and Hagakure squealed as they celebrated finally having their first taste of high school romance, clasping hands and cheering.

“Doki doki Todoroki!” Hagakure cheered, Mina parroting her as they rode the high of their excitement. Meanwhile, Todoroki stared dumbly at the two girls in front of him, the dots slowly connecting in his mind. Everything was happening way too quick. And you liked him back? Wait, is that-

“Is that why Kaminari and Sero asked me how I was yesterday?”

“Ugh, that Kaminari~! He can’t even be subtle!” Todoroki could hear the pout in Hagakure’s voice, and Mina sighed and nodded in agreement. Well that answers that, at least. Now for the other million and one questions he had...

“So… what am I supposed to do now?”

“Confess!” Came Hagakure’s immediate response.

Well, that makes sense. Now that he has a grasp on what he’s feeling and he knows that you feel the same, it’s only logical that he should make them known.

“Okay, where is she?”

“In the classr-”

“Nuh-uh, hold it,” Mina stopped Todoroki from barging into the classroom, and he stared down at her, confusion mounting. Wasn’t she super excited just two seconds ago? What happened now?

“Minaaaa!” She ignored Hagakure’s impatient wail and poked him in the chest.

“You can’t just go in there and confess in the classroom in front of everybody!”

“…Why not?” He just had to tell you, so better sooner than later, right?

“Oh jeez, okay, um,” Mina pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to think of a way to explain this to easily the densest person she had the pleasure of knowing. And she knew Kaminari, for Christ’s sake, “It isn’t as romantic if you just go in there and blurt it out in front of everybody, and it puts her on the spot too, would you want that?”

No, you hated being put on the spot. He shook his head and Mina sighed in relief.

“Okay, so, what you’re gonna do is…”

“Did you need to talk to me about something, Todoroki?”

Ah, there it was again. Could you hear his heart beating out of his chest from where you stood?

Classes had ended for the day and Mina had instructed him to confess after school at a specific spot (much to Hagakure’s chagrin, but she eventually agreed that it would be more romantic this way. Not like he knew what romantic looked like.) So, here he was, veering off your usual course from the dorms to this spot Mina had pointed out to him. It was where the trees broke just enough so the sunset could peek through the leaves. As inexperienced in, well, everything as he was, Todoroki had to admit Mina knew what she was talking about.

“Todoroki?”

The words he was told to recite sailed out the window the moment the time came, the light of the sunset casting you in a warm glow and God this wasn’t fair-

“…I like you.”

Oh, shit. Did he say that? Okay, yeah, he did. Oops.

He almost regrets it, but then he sees your lips bloom with a smile and the world goes quiet.

“I like you too, Todoroki.”

You crushed him in a hug and Todoroki wrapped his arms around you, smiling as he felt your own heart racing against his. His heart beating a mile a minute didn’t sound too bad anymore.

As long as it beat for you.

[deltarune-pagerau]

hi,so um just came across this blog and it seems really neat! I'd like to know more about it if you don't mind

sure thing! this might end up being a little long so just in case heres a tldr: wanted to make spam a new outfit and it just kind of spiraled form there

putting this under a readmore because this is gonna be kinda long im probably infodumping OTL

i made spamton a new outfit and starting coming up with a reason he’d have it so essentially, about a year before the events of ch 2, the phone randomly goes dead and the connection between spamton and gaster is abruptly severed. at this point, he still the spamton we have in game but all of the sudden its like someone turned on a light in a dark room and hes just kind of like???? whats going on??? he knows something happened, with everything starting to get bad at the mansion, but he can’t really remember the rest

im not so great at exposition(def better at drawing than writing lol) but eventually he bumps into swatch and they notice just how different spamton is and how weird that is but they decide to help him out and get him somewhere he can actually rest up and figure out what the hell is going on (neither of them actually figure it out though but the phone is something that comes up enough that swatch makes a mental note of it) so while hes resting up, spamton washes the black out of his hair because something about it just...rubs him the wrong way but, its some of it is permanently black no matter how much he tries to get rid of it (after a while, bleaching it gets annoying)

once hes all recovered(which isnt much, but honestly he’s so much better than he was before) spamton’s next goal is to get a job so he can “stop [[MOOCHING FREELOADER]]” off of swatch, swatch suggests setting him up with the gift shop job (which works out for him because he can focus more on being head butler) which spamton reminds them that one of the few things he does remember is being evicted and banned from the mansion but! hes got a plan! all that amounts to his changing his name back to spam. spamton may be banned, but spam isn’t.(swatch isnt sure how much that’ll work, but with how different he looks and acts, and figures that queen wont pay him much attention anyway, so it should be fine. maybe.)

but it works out and eventually spam is doing better and the job is working out really well (although the counter may or may not be built with swatchlings in mind) and as soon as hes truly on his own, swatch gives him a pager (re; [[REQUEST: NO PHONES]]) and after that, everything is somewhat normal until we reach the events of the chapter.

kris still meets spam in the same place in canon, but instead of actually living in the dumpster, hes trying to get behind it because he dropped his keys. whether or not kris helps him is kinda important but if i get into that this post will be longer than i want it to be lol (helping him earns kris a [[Friends and Family 50% Off Discount!]] at the cafe, though) neo is still a possibility too, but he’s not as insistent about it. 

at first.

some other (not so important) spam details include:

-can no longer see without the glasses (which can do fun things like Static™️ and Bluescreen™️)

-doesn’t talk [[LIKE THIS]] all the time anymore, but any sort of heightened emotion (excited, stressed, ect.) can bring it out

-lost his glow after the acid river

-his pager has a new number and not his old one (Gaster-B-Gone™️)

-harboring anger at his siblings(maybe)

-sometimes has dreams where he can hear a phone, somewhere, ringing. he always wakes up before he can find it. he doesnt know why hes even looking for it

-changing his name back to spam is purely a business strategy and totally not because he wants to go back to normal as much as possible totally not the other thing he swears

-salt route au and snowgrave are still possibilities(im a sucker for angst ok)

i might update this post if i want to add anything, but for now i think thats about it! im going to draw more eventually, but my ipads on the charger right now. im happy you’re interested!

and yes i did call it pager au just because he solely uses a pager now im bad at names

[fmab-liveblog]

Ed and Al have different circles! Al’s is the same as when he found Isaac, the large triangle with three others. I don’t think I’ve seen Ed’s anywhere else. 

And years have actually passed! Al has visibly aged quite a bit. That’s one of the great things about this show - characters age. (Kinda to the point that I’m sideyeing the canon timeline based on physical appearances)

This is the kind of shit kids get up to at summer camp

Also, looking closer, they have kitchen knives. Bless them. 

Excuse me but what in the fresh hell

Oh. My gosh. I thought Al’s English voice actor was really good, but the Japanese VA’s scream here physically hurts. 

Start both counters for Ed and Al getting teary-eyed. This, ohmygosh. Maybe it’s lack of sleep but I’m getting kinda teary over this myself? Kids shouldn’t be this afraid or in this kind of pain. Normally when I watch stuff I emotionally check out and it takes a very particular level of touching to get to me - not too much or I’ll go blank, but still enough to get a reaction. Doing this rewatch, though, I have to stop and focus and appreciate how hard this actually hits. (And pause to take screenshots and write up reactions) I’m not okay.

Daaaang they really foreshadow everything. Ed’s got a sort of amnesia here, and Al gets something similar later. I thought the plot point “Al doesn’t remember seeing this and that’s why he can’t do alchemy by clapping” was a little odd, but no, it has a basis right here. 

Woah, Truth’s voice actors are very different. I think this one is better by far. The English VA is very high and nasally and gives distinct Villain vibes, where this one is far more neutral. I don’t get the sense that this Truth is condescending or taking extreme pleasure in hurting Ed, they just are. I think the voice layering is better, too - at least 3 distinct voices. 

I take back my ‘less condescending’ comment. Give him a break, he’s like 12. (Though, you could argue if he’s old enough to do human transmutation he’s old enough to deal with the consequences.) 

Also, I love this VA’s screams for Ed. I like the English VA better for casual conversation just because he’s so punchable, but this guy hits the emotional notes without me wincing. 

(I saved this image as ‘saw God and bluescreened’) It’s really not a funny frame in context, but going back and forth between writing and watching gives me a chuckle ljhg

Anyway, is this the first time Ed’s been truly alone? He’s had Al with him through everything and now he just died, saw existence, saw his dead mom but not really and lost a leg. This poor boy. 

And he’s back to normal. I’d pick on him for having his priorities wrong, but I don’t think he remembers Al right now. 

Anyway, I admire his dedication. I want him on the group project. 

Ok, Truth casually taking his leg was unsettling, and the immediate cut to this? SHIT, I’m looking harder and he isn’t curled around his stump, he’s arched up off the ground screaming - you can see his right leg braced on the ground. 

First and probably only time Ed sounds this broken, begging for help. Seriously, I’m getting emotional rewatching this. It’s just so, so childish and vulnerable. I want to hug him. 

Cutting it here because ow. 

[astalkingirin]

She-Ra Predictions

Welp let’s get this done before the wire.

Catra turns on Hordak Prime. Catra hacking her way up the chain of command is the one thing she is an unqualified success at, the problem’s always been that she keeps wanting her superiors to validate her instead of taking over. Also, the only time Catra’s even able to take a breath and think about if this is actually what she wants is when she’s in a position of power. (Possibly this backstabbing will involve a simple lever flip, given that’s how she doomed Etheria last time.)

Relatedly, not sure what happens now that Adora’s lost the sword and having a crisis, but it does mean Adora has a good chance of not setting Catra off. I think all would be forgiven on Catra’s side if Adora directly asked for help, but I’m not sure that’s something even broken-sword whoops I’m a colonialist weapon Adora could do. I’m going to tentatively guess they do not manage to coordinate, Adora just gets across that things are bad on her end and that’s good enough for Catra. It’s possible this represents growth for the two of them, it’s also possible Adora thinks she didn’t get through to Catra and spends most of the season still thinking it’s still all on her while Catra flails about destructively. I think the actual endgame solution is powering everyone up on Etheria and trying to storm the ship.

Pretty sure Shadow Weaver’s going to die doing whatever magic thing she’s doing. She went over to the good guys only to villain even harder and I can’t see how any of that could be dealt with in the few episodes remaining. Also, she’s proven she’s really good at getting people to let her out of prison so that isn’t even a solution. (Also also, she’s the only one who’s killed people.) And we’ve known since the first episode that she’s willing to hurt herself for the sake of magical power, so ultimately blowing herself up with it makes sense.

If Shadow Weaver’s going to die, that would contradict the idea no major character will die, which in turns is bad news for Hordak Prime surviving Catra turning on him. Hordak Prime also mostly killed regular Hordak and off-screen killed uncountable people, making him the second most murdery after Shadow Weaver’s multiple definite kills in backstory. Like Shadow Weaver, it’s probably going to be substantially his own fault though I would prefer if the kids murdered him.

I think Angela’s going to come back, possibly just in an epilogue after everything’s done and Micah has a chance to work on the problem. Entrapta similarly is going to get some version of Hordak back - I think the most likely is amnesia’d Hordak since that means nobody needs to get into what Hordak did. If she manages to restore his memories then it’s pretty plausible he also dies because again, out of room for dealing with any of that, which is why I think factory reset Hordak is more likely. That said, Entrapta’s presumably just going to fuck off to her lab again with Hordak, so she could have the fully restored version and just never tell anyone, avoiding the issue of how anyone else feels about this. (Oh, also given the scale of the empire they’re dealing with, possibly the only actual solution that isn’t blowing everyone up would be to actually take control as the new head, and we know Entrapta seems willing to consider cyborged clones close enough to robots that she likes them.)

What’s up with Glimmer? We know she and Catra get along like oil and water and she fed Shadow Weaver power to torture Catra, so on Glimmer’s side, not a Catra fan. Luckily that’s basically just Mondays for Catra and Glimmer’s a pragmatic and straightforward person, so it may not occur to Catra to hold a grudge or Glimmer to waste energy worrying Catra will betray her. If Catra gets mad it’ll probably just be that Adora likes Glimmer better and friendship insecurity is possibly the only point Glimmer could empathize with Catra on. (Or Glimmer can bring up that also Shadow Weaver likes Glimmer better and Catra can bluescreen. Kind of depends on if we have enough episode time for Catra to do her usual self-destructive stuff. If Catra’s willing to work together from the start, that’d be a good spanner in the works.) Also a concern: is Glimmer too straightforward to play nice with Hordak Prime? We know she can act given that’s how she dealt with Double Trouble, but it’s not her typical way of solving problems and that was with people she already trusted. Also guessing she gets off the ship and reports back to the others, since she’s got teleport powers and plotwise the rest of the cast needs to know what’s going on.

Now that Scorpia is officially on the princess side as a whole and not just hanging out with the princesses in pillow prison, some actual adult can finally explain her family’s history. It’s been implied there’s missing pieces and propaganda the whole time, and it’d only take five minutes to have a primary source just say what went down. Also hopefully something about the messy tangle of loyalties Scorpia has, but mostly, I just want someone to say what actually happened for once.

[esamastation]

Bigger Universe, Extended

The portal closes behind Tony while he's too busy staring at the explosion.

He's feeling – horror is not quite the right word for it. Something about the vastness of universe and the infinity of space and the fact that there are aliens and they have better tech than him and how small and fragile Earth is, all of it wrapped in micron thin layer of

holy shit holy shit holyshit

.

Cosmic horror maybe, because he feels cosmically horrified.

And the portal closes.

"Shit, " Tony gasps, trying to turn to look. He's flying forwards fast and the seam of the portal closing is already far behind him, vanishing fast. "JARVIS?"

"Connection with Tower Mainframe lost, sir. The portal is gone," JARVIS answers, while Tony looks at the HUD, desperate for facts. No atmospheric pressure, of course, no heat readings, no gasses – bit of radiation, wonderful.

The compass can't tell which way is up – which makes sense since Tony can't tell which way is up – because there is no up in space. What even is up?

It almost makes him laugh, hysterically. He shouldn't, because he's stranded in god knows where in space and it's not funny. "JARVIS, what's up?" he asks and giggles and oh god he's going to die.

"Well, good news is, with intake closed off and regulators off line, the suit can handle vacuum of space," JARVIS says somewhat sardonically. "Congratulations, sir, you have a viable space suit."

"And the bad news?" Tony asks.

"You have approximately 526 seconds of oxygen remaining."

"Shit," Tony answers. Under nine minutes. "What the hell do I – JARVIS, scan everything, scan the," he motions ahead, at the wreck of the Chitauri fleet. "Scan everything."

"Scanning," JARVIS answers dutifully and as the scanners come online Tony tries to figure out how to fly in space.

Answer: very fast.

"Hooly shit! Whoa, okay, okay, steering is – argh," Tony flails as the smallest repulsor burst send him into wild spins. "JARVIS, lower the output on hand repulsors!"

JARVIS does as asked and after some more flailing Tony manages to aim himself forward and at the wreck ahead. Though calling it a wreck is really putting it lightly.

It's an asteroid field of metal. There's the – station maybe? Which is now blown open thanks to a direct hit with a nuke. Then there are the masses, absolute masses of Chitauri everywhere.

"JARVIS," Tony says as they zoom past a inert group of the big metal whale things. "Are they dead?"

"I am registering energy and heat signatures from various devices – but no movements."

"Anything organic?"

"I am detecting organic matter, yes, however nothing living within the scanners reach, aside from you sir."

Tony looks at a group of Chitauri on their hover bike things. Their pilots are… hanging around, more or less some by only a loose grip still holding onto the controls of their vehicles. Some of the pilots were just floating there, above and around the still bikes.

They look dead. But they also look partially robotic, which throws a wrench into any logic one might apply to them. But dead or not – they're definitely out of the fight now. "They're like machines – it's a remote controlled cyborg army," Tony mutters. "That's a… that's pretty tough deal now that I think about it."

"Quite. And it seems you broke the remote, sir."

"Do you think that killed them?" Tony asks uneasily, looking around them, at the Chitauri bodies floating about.

"I am not registering any life signatures," JARVIS says simply, which is as good as yes.

Tony narrows his eyes. "They might be zombie space cyborgs. Could be that they never were alive in the first place."

"What a delightful concept, sir."

It's eerie to fly past these enormous clumps of a completely inert army – eerie and a little bit terrifying because all of these things had been aimed at Earth. And there was a lot of them, more and more every which way he looks. Only fraction of the actual invasion force had gotten through.

If the portal hadn't closed...

"Damn," Tony mutters. Soon he'd process through the whole thing – soon he'd be pissed off about being stranded in space. Right now he's just glad this force hadn't gotten to his planet. Just few more minutes and it would've been to much for Avengers to handle

"Fuck, we got lucky that the portal was so small," Tony sighs and then looks ahead – above, below? It's hard to tell, directions don't really work in zero gravity. The wreck of the control station ship thing is coming closer fast in any case – and with it, the radiation climbs.

Gamma rays all over the place. It had been one of SHIELD's juiced up Tesseract nukes, then. Damn. If it had hit New York, had hit where it'd been aimed – his tower smack in middle of Manhattan… the death toll would've been in the millions. Talk about fucking overkill.

"Sir, I am detecting a pocket of gasses inside the vessel," JARVIS says and a litany of gasses pop up on Tony's HUD.

"I can't breathe that," Tony says with a frown. There is nitrogen and oxygen though. "Can we filter it?"

"Debatable, sir. However, it is the best available option," JARVIS informs him.

"Right," Tony says and looks around. "Let's see if we can get in, then."

Behind the Chitauri command centre there are stars, painfully brilliant stars – a galactic core, Tony thinks vaguely, has to be. It shines like something out of a sci-fi movie, except better and worse because it's real, real and blinding. Its space, it's real honest to god space and he's seeing not on a screen but – well, on a screen but it's his HUD screen. Live image. Because it's real.

"I'm in space," Tony whispers.

"Yes, sir, and you have 253 seconds of oxygen remaining. So I'd suggest getting indoors."

"I'm in space, JARVIS. Actual space."

Oh god he's in space, looking at the centre of a galaxy and he doesn't even know if it's the Milky Way.

"Becoming part of a bigger universe," Tony murmurs. "Fury, you prophetic son of a bitch."

-

Finding a way into the space station thing is easy – finding a way easy without breaking the gas pocket inside is harder. Tony could blast his way in, easy enough – but then there would go the gas bubble and any use he might get out of it would be gone.

The place is a wreck of debris, bits of metal flying this way and that, and gaping holes where the nuke had torn into the station. Tony has to constantly evade to avoid being hit, and he's probably lucky that the fastest moving bits are already long gone, flung into space – there are no micro meteors around anymore to tear holes into his suit. It's still not exactly the safest place ever.

"I need an airlock, a section with bulkheads, something," Tony says. "JARVIS, do you have a map of the remains?"

"Given value of a map, sir," JARVIS answers and then brings up a simile of a one on the HUD screen. There are haphazard tunnels of gas inside the wrecked station, some of them broken by sections of no gas, others continuing for hundreds of feet before ending abruptly where the space station had been torn open.

There's no time to debate on which way would be the smartest – Tony is running out of air, fast. So, he picks a section which he hopes has been sealed into individual bits and then dives into the wreck, looking for a door of some kind to force open.

He finds it, with metal girders and walls collapsed all around it. The door is dilating door, which makes forcing the damn thing open harder than it has any reasonable right to be – but maybe that's the point. Harder for any potential hostile forces to break in.

Damn Chitauri and their surprisingly reasonable constructions.

"JARVIS, more power to boot repulsor," Tony grunts, while trying to take a grip of the edge of the metal door, right at the centre. JARVIS ups his propulsion and Tony is almost thrown off the door entirely, face planting against it – once again, steering in zero-G. "Fuck, okay, let me –" he quickly shifts his feet to different angles, one pushing him forwards while other pushes up. "Okay, another try."

It's all so strangely silent – Tony can only hear the whir of the suit and his own breath, but door itself is silent as it opens, bit by bit, dilating open at the middle. There is a sudden push – gas escaping – that almost throws Tony off the door entirely, but he hangs on for dear life, until the entire section inside is empty.

Tony checks the map – and thank god, he didn't blow the entire gas bubble, just about twenty feet section of it. The thing is divided into sealed sections, thank, fucking, god.

"Okay, now we just need to get in," Tony mutters. He finally gets the door open by levering his shoulder against the opening and pushing until the plates finally give away, and the door dilates enough for him to squeeze in.

"92 Seconds of oxygen remaining," JARVIS informs him with a note of alarm in his voice.

"Gotta close it," Tony answers and then they do the whole door thing in reverse, forcing the sickle-like blades of the door back inwards, to close the iris. Thankfully that is easier – the thing is made to shut easily and open hard. "JARVIS, is it sealed? Is it airtight?"

"I am not hundred percent certain, sir, it would need to be tested with gas," JARVIS answers. "But I believe so."

"Right, awesome, excellent," Tony says and then blasts off from the door. JARVIS has the oxygen timer on the screen now – 56 seconds, 55 seconds…

Now that he has the technique figured out, he gets the next dilating bulkhead open in just fifteen unbearable seconds, rather than thirty, and shut in four. He loses some oxygen to physical exertion and by the time he gets the second bulk head shut, he's sitting at 31 seconds.

The gas settles – the bulkheads hold.

"JARVIS, if we put all we have into filters, is there any way we can get something I can breath out of this crap?" Tony asks desperately. 28 seconds.

JARVIS calculates it – and he must be desperate too because the HUD bluescreens for a moment into code before clearing back into image. "It won't be pleasant, sir, and it will diminish the lifespan of the filters by approximately 60%.

"My lifespan is diminished by 100% if we don't – just do it!"

JARVIS is right. It's not pleasant. It's not pleasant at all. Even with the filters working at 150% the small puff of air JARVIS gives him smells like rotten eggs and instantly makes Tony's head spin – too much methane, too much ammonia.

"Oh holy fucking – oh no, erugh," Tony gags in his helmet and has to take a moment to try and breathe in calmly in order to stop himself from vomiting – which doesn't actually help. "Oh no, nope, nuh-uh, can't. Oh my god I'm going to hurl. I can't hurl into a sealed helmet, I'll drown – oh my god."

"Small breaths through, sir," JARVIS suggests helplessly.

"Small breaths don't help – I think I can feel my lungs trying to crawl out of my body," Tony says and gags again. The urge to vomit is overwhelming. Body, trying to expel poisons. Wonderful. "I need proper filters and I need them now. Or a tank of pure oxygen – JARVIS you wouldn't have possibly spotted anything like that? Please tell me you did."

"I'm afraid not, sir," JARVIS answers regretfully. "However I have scanned the vehicle and I believe I have discovered some form of atmospheric regulator system."

"... and it being a space ship type of thing, it would have gas control," Tony says, trying to swallow around the terrible taste in his mouth and with shudder quickly looks around.

The Chitauri space station is… well, it's alien. Tony supposes he's lucky it's not some ghastly uncanny valley amalgamation of organic and inorganic like the Chitauri themselves – no, thankfully the place is fully metal. But it's just… alien. It's weird sort of grandiose with metal that looks almost golden, with angles that look almost artistic – but it's all set against a sort of dirty, washed out black that then makes everything look a bit like bottom of a rusting barrel. It's hard to put a word for it.

It would make a nice set for an Alien movie.

"Still no life signals?" Tony asks, swallowing and trying to ignore the way his stomach roils while giving a nearby wall a uneasy look. He thinks he's seen photo filters with that gradient – the one that makes everything look post-apocalyptic.

"None, sir," JARVIS replies.

Around them place is quiet and eerie and empty – dead, except for the occasional distant crash of debris hitting the remaining walls and structures of the space station. Every sound echoes hollowly in the distance. It's like they're in a submarine. Which is sinking. And falling apart.

Its just creepy, all of it.

"Okay," Tony says and shudders again. "Ugh, right. Talk me through the atmospheric regulator and let's see if we can get the methane and ammonia at least out before I fucking choke to death."

"Gladly, sir," JARVIS says and with the scanners online and constantly sweeping the area surrounding them, they set to explore the space station.

-

Eventually, Tony starts running into bodies.

A lot of bodies.

It seems that it wasn't just the Chitauri outside that got – un-remote-controlled. The ones inside had just keeled over too, leaving their cooling bodies floating all over the place. Close up and in the empty, creepy space station, they're even worse than they'd been on Earth. At least in Earth there had been familiar homely things around them to distract from the sheer… creepiness of the Chitauri.

Their faces look a lot like skulls, with bit of alien skin stretched over them.

"You know, as far alien invasion armies go, these guys are up there with the best of them," Tony comments. "Please tell me we're getting somewhere near some kind of control centre because I am probably going to freak out soon. And hyperventilating in this shit is not my idea of good time."

"I," JARVIS says and then stops. "I suspect I might have made a miscalculation."

"Oh?" Tony asks, subtly lifting a hand in case he's about to be attacked.

"I judged by the design of the walls that they lead into some sort of centralised control centre, but we have not so far encountered any sort of user interfaces. It might be that there are no physical controls here."

Tony frowns and looks around them. All the walls so far have been smooth – there are no door controls, no controls for lights, no panels, nothing. There is nothing resembling an user interface anywhere he can see. "Oh," he says and then looks down at a near by Chitauri body, floating a foot or so from the floor.

A cybernetically enhanced Chitauri body.

"They interface with their brains," Tony says flatly. "Of course they do."

"Well, via their uplinks, however those work," JARVIS agrees.

Shaking his head, Tony lowers himself down to prod at the dead Chitauri. The alien doesn't as much as twitch. "Sure they're dead?" Tony asks while the body slowly turns after his prod

"I am detecting nothing resembling organic life signature," JARVIS says. "And I believe their implants are… fried."

"Hm," Tony answers and pushes the Chitauri over. "Scan it and give me a picture."

The picture is somewhat grim one. Of course Tony isn't entirely sure the Chitauri kept their brains in their heads – or that they even had brains. But something had blown up in their heads, turning the insides into a goopy mushy mess.

"A self destruct," Tony surmises. "When the control centre blew up and they lost their uplink, it triggered a self destruct. That's a… bit gruesome."

"I suppose Chitauri do not know the concept of surrender, sir," JARVIS says.

Tony stands up again. "Shit," he then says. "I was hoping we could hijack whatever's left of this place. At least enough to give me a viable atmosphere to breath in, for fuck's sake."

There's a moment of silence, during which the hopelessness of being stranded on an alien ship full of poisonous gas with bunch of dead aliens with no way back home and no idea where in the universe he even is licks at the edge of his sanity. Then Tony pushes it aside because – fuck it, he's not dying here.

"Can you – JARVIS do you think you can interface with the station?" He asks. "We got our own uplink, any chance it's at all like the one Chitauri use? I mean the electromagnetic spectrum is the same for everyone and that's what everyone uses, right?"

"We can only hope," JARVIS answers and falls quiet, testing it out.

Tony breathes shallowly as he waits, shutting his eyes for a moment. He thinks he's maybe getting used to the smell of rotting eggs. Or it might be that his olfactory sense is getting completely fucking fried here. He's getting light headed though, more and more as time goes on. Definitely not enough oxygen.

"I don't think they use the electromagnetic spectrum in their communications sir," JARVIS finally says. "However I think – the station can hear me?"

"AI?" Tony answers, swallowing. His tongue feels rotten.

"I'm not certain," JARVIS answers in strange tone of voice. "It is receiving my communication, but it is not responding. I am not certain it can understand me."

"It's alien. Why would it? We got different languages. If it even uses language," Tony says and breathes in and out, in and out. "Try and – I don't know. How do people do first contact with different languages in movies? Universal constants, uh, atomic weights, electromagnetic spectrum – π? Mathematics?"

"I do not think the station can comprehend my programming language," JARVIS admits.

Tony thinks about it for a moment. His head is starting to pound, and his brain is probably not working as fast as it should. "Yes and no, negative and positive," he says. It's an alien ship and Chitauri obviously mastered space travel – that should mean that their computers would be on bar with the likes of JARVIS, he hopes. "Try – protons vs. electrons? Isotopes?"

"And how do I convey that, sir, when there is no coherent medium of communication?" JARVIS asks, sarcastic. "It cannot understand my code – and everything I try to say to it is, at the base level, code."

"Shit, okay, give me a moment," Tony says and tries to think it through. Fuck, he really isn't the guy for first contact language barriers, even if it is between two AIs. If the station even has an AI. "Okay, forget that – numbers. Send it patches of sequences in increasing order, with corresponding number symbol. See if you can teach it our number system."

JARVIS falls quiet while Tony just drifts in the zero gravity and tries not to choke. The silence stretches. And stretches. Eventually, Tony frowns. "JARVIS?"

"I believe it understood me," the AI answers warily. "It's sending prime numbers at me. Also, sir, I believe I now know number of undiscovered prime numbers?"

"Okay, awesome, you just hang onto those in case we ever make it back to Earth, you'll get a prize," Tony says. "How about you move to atoms now? Because there's bunch of atoms hanging around here I'd like not to be hanging around here."

- - - 

Uploading this here too because of well timed six hour downtime on ao3, like, damn. Anyway, continued this piece but it didn’t really turn how I wanted it to and I got bored and I’m just going to leave it here.

[shinrakirigaya]

Hello this is my bio for gradient some of it is non canon for exple his story belongs to me and all but the baby drawing of gray is mine :3 The baby picher of ink holding gray belongs to @rainbowsixwolf Gradient Drama CQ Nick Name: Gray, Grad Combo of: Ink- @comyet and Error @loverofpiggies Creator: @askcomboclub ---Stats:--- HP:  36 ATK:  17 DEF:  16 ---Biographical informashion--- Species: skeleton Gender: Male Age: 14 Date of birth: March 5th Hight: 4'6" (so smol, but growing slowly) ----Family---- (tenicly cannon if you add logic) Dad: Error Mom: ink Sister: PaperJam Half Brother: Bluescreen Half Brother: Palette Half Brother: Van Half Brother: Splatter Half Brother: Strike ----about me---- (mix of non and cannon) Roommate: Flip Closes Friends: Serif, Karma Loves: Geno, Mafia Crush: Nightmare, Horror, Error Likes:  Digital Art, Scenery Art, Architecture, Pixel Art, Astronomy Dislikes:  Insults, Being Surrounded by a Large Group of Strangers, Vegetable Oil, Dream, Blue, panic and asma attacts Hobbies: Creating, Drawing, Sketching, Traveling through the Multiverse, Star Gazing, Doll Making ---favoret food--- (non cannon) What does he like to eat?:  Gradient, because he has more Error in him than Ink, he can eat normal food but he particularly has a sweet tooth.  Also, at times he will destroy something and devour it’s code.  This method is good for him in case he is really injured and it would take a long time for him to heal.  Though, because he was born in the anti-void, it’s not a necessity for him, its more of luxury. ---Profile--- (cannon) Personality He is shy and wary when you first meet him, due to him being mistaken as error many times. When you get to know him, though, he is snarky, sarcastic and a bit ornery. ---Appearance--- (cannon) Gradient has greyish purple boans, red puples, turquoise "tears", similar to error, and green teat. His fingers are like error's. He wears a black and blue jacket, long brown pants, tiger print shoes and glasses. He has a red jacket tied around his waist, which holds a paper pad and a pen. ---Attakes--- (non cannon) Power's: ShapeShifting, Error blaster's, bone attake. Specialty's: Creating, healing Power's and Glitched shield ----Official description---- (cannon) Gradient is a digital artist who is in a constant cycle of creating and destroying. He can't help but make art but then he feels the art he did is not good enough and destroys it not long after. Spends a lot of time in the combo club art room. Is very shy and wary of strangers but once you get to know him he can be raver snarky and sarcastic. ----My description---- (mine) Hi im gradient and this is my story When i was born error was still the destroyer and ink the creator heck back then fresh was they protector but that's besides the point. I was born as you would expect in the anti void and neither new the outside world or the love of a parent. Error tried to kill me when he found out called me a glitch and as for ink he tried to look after me but everytime he sore error in me he would snap its never safe when they were together so i hid under tables and beds. When i was 7 i almost had a family ink and error came together and tried to raise me but it didn't last. They were yelling and breaking things i tried to stop them but ink struck me for the first time i ran to my room and started crying. I remember a surge of magic run through me as i started to create my first and only portel the floor glitched and polled me though i remember seeing there sad and desperate faces as they tried to teach me but it was too late. I woke up in the bata void and stayed there in that white abyss of 10 years until error found me again. I watched from my screen error and ink create a new family relaxing me with paperjam so i was reluctant at first there was so much i didn't know until i found bluescreen He's my half brother on errors side his dad is blueberry now let me tell you me and blue screen meet them and was fanboying all over the place i mean come on there the originals the most strongest people in the multiverse they like celebrities not to mentchen we ship everything we see and crash god we're nerds though i guess its also has to have something to do with the fact we had near to 0 contact to the outside world are entire lives. Were like twins it's amazing i found him in the files and brought him with me i also have another half brother his name is pallet on inks side his dad is drem pallet is in love with are cusin goth who is the son of death and geno geno and fresh snd are uncles by the way on errors side and we love them but not as much as paperjam loves fresh. Paper Jam is my little bit bluescreens older brother he was born of ink and error he never had to prove himself to them and they traded him like a son on day one so i guess you can say i feel envy for him but i love him and will protect him to my last breath. ---Gradients Lalaby--- (mine) safe and sound we wait in silence with nothing but are ink, with No one there to harm or hurt us, is in silence that we think, though time mean not, ill wait for you to hold you closs agine, for now im free ill keep you safe, and stare at the stares agine... ---Gradients Story--- (mine) Prologue Nothing is what I see. Silence is what I hear. Numbness is what I feel. Trapped in this never ending void of white is where I stay, alone and afraid. And yet, I’ve never been safer. I’m a glitch you see, an ERroR A BeInG ThAt ShOuLdn’T EXIST! Or at least that’s what I’ve been told, heck my own mother thinks I’m a mistake, welts my father tried to kill me more times than I can count. I do not blame them though it is their nature to hate me after all. I guess I have to explain, my father is called Error or the destroyer, and he is the one that goes around destroying AUs or alternate universes and as expected where there is Destruction there is also Creation. That’s where mom comes in, his name is Ink and yes I know but Gray how do to mails have kids, and there is a good answer to that as well, . . . Magic. Anyways ink is the one that creates the au’s in order to keep the balance. They are the opposite of one another, yin and yang, good and evil, wells one destroys another Protects and like everyone in this situation, they hate each other and fight whenever they meet. It was these two that created me. Half Destroyer. Half Creator. I am nothing compared to them, should I chose to protect in the end there’s not much my kind can do… Ten years I’ve been stuck in this empty void with nothing but my ink, dolls and creators pen, I cannot leave nor can I call for help. . . after all I doubt anyone remembers that I ever existed for who could ever love a glitch. The Escape I sit on the floor of the Bata Voids staring into the empty space of white, all knowledge of the outside world has forever been lost two mw, excepted for two things. “My name is Gradient and this doll in my hand is Error, my dad and one day he will find me, but why do I know that?…” I close my eyes as I try to think, a faint memory comes to mine or perhaps just a dream for something this beautiful could never exist is a world of white, a place filled with glittering lights and the face of a man I long to see. It was his voids I remember most, a song he sang to help me sleep once, if I remember correctly I became ill and he never left my side, for some reason I always wanted to know why he bothered if I’m just another glitch to him. But it was in this action that gives me some hope of escaping this hell. After all no matter where I hid or tried to run away, he would always find me. I get up for a split second before collapsing to the floor agile, all feeling in my legs are gone. I stare blankly as the ink that I tipped in my moment of carelessness and watch as the pitch black liquid engulfs the pure white floor. Tears begin to fall down my face as I try everything in my power to stay sane, I close my eyes as I began to sing the very same lullaby that man used to sing all thoughts years ago. “Safe and sound we wait in silent with nothing but are ink. With no one there to harm or hurt us in silence that we think. Though time means not I’ll wait for you to hold you close again. For now I’m free I’ll keep you safe and stare at the stares again…” A memory comes to me as I stare at my glitches hands. My father holding me close as he cry’s into my shoulder, repeating the same words as I glitch into this white abyss. “I don’t know where you’ll be but, I promise, I will find you and when I do will stare at the stares again for all long as you wish, I’m so sorry my so-” I never did get to hear the end of what he was gone say next. I sigh as I pull out my creator’s pen to see the worlds I’ve been dreading for years. “Low battery, exactly the two worlds I didn’t want to see right now.” I close my eyes as a glitches portal opened up in front of me. It was at that moment I know I was finally free. Chapter Three Lost child It was a normal day when I first learned about him, you see my name is Geno or as some might know me as Aftertale sans I am originally from a genocide run so I get kinda triggered from certain comments. Anyways as I was saying it was like any other day, on this day I was visiting my brother error and his wife? Husband…. Ima says wife ya that sounds right so anyways I was visiting my brother at his house in the anti-void. Now you might be wondering, what's the anti-void, well it's like the void but white. Though seriously the anti-void is a big white endless space that error resided alone. Now a daze it's much more noisy. You see in the past error used to be known as the destroyer of the AUs but that was before he met ink, sure they fought a lot and tried to kill each other but know they're inseparable. Ink and error fell in love and like any love story they got married and had a kid named paper jam, I for one like Paperjam he's a cute kid though I find it weird how he has a crush on my brother who is his uncle and what makes it even weirder I think fresh likes him back. Shakes head. that’s off topic though, so as I was saying, I was visiting my brother when I found that photo. I was sitting on the sofa with error when ink asked me to grab an art book from the cupboard for him. So like any kind person I got up and went to the cuboid, but as I was getting the book I knocked over what seemed to be an old photo from. When I picked it up I knotted that the glass what cracked that must have happened in the fall. On closer inspection I knottiest it was a pitcher of error holding what I assume was paperjam. But there was something off about it, unlike paperjam this baby didn't have ink splat he also had box like blue markings on his gray bones unlike paperjam. This got me thinking that this must be someone else kid, so as the cuross and concerned older brother I decided to ask error about it. I closed the door of the cupboard and made my way to the sofa pitcher in hand as I poke errors cheek, Error turns and faces me with little annoyance. “Is there something you need geno?” he asked me in curiosity. “I was wondering if you knew who this baby is considering that you are in the pitcher.?” I handed the photo over to error and sit in wait for any reaction. Error looks at the photo amused by genos curiosity but the more he stares at it, the more his grin starts to fade. He looks at the photo with dread almost like he regretting something. I continue to watch him as he places a hand on the photo over the child face like he's trying to physically touch the child in the image. Curiosity takes over me as I asked him something I know he didn't want to here. “You do know this child right?” My eyes widen as error starts to cry holding the photo close to his chest. I pull him into a comforting hug, rubbing his back to calm him down. “Hay now it's OK, you don't need to tell me if you don't want to” Error shakes his head. “on its not right that you don't know him it's just we've kept this secret for so long…” “You can tell me anything brother, i'm here for you” I place a hand on his shoulder and give him an encouraging look. Error wipes the tears from his eyes as he stares at Geno. “The child in the photo… the reason I know him is that he is mine and inks child.” My eyes widen in disbelief. “you have another child with ink? Why did you never tell us and why did you need to keep it secret” Error looks down in sadness. “The reason we kept it secret is because I killed him…” I jump up in surprise and scream. “YOU DID WHAT TO HIM!!!” Error cried harder as he shakes. “i-it wasn't my fault, h-he just started glitching a-and then the next moment he was gone, I tried to find him believe me I did but ink… he didn't believe me I know he's alive out there I just need to find him I j-just DAMIT” “error pleases calm down this isn't good for you” Error hugs Geno. “Please big brother you have to find him m-maybe he's in the save screen i'll do anything just…. Bring him home” “i'll see what I can do…” Chapter 4 New Biggings ---Genos pov--- I have been searching everywhere and asking everyone i know if they have seen him, tho it was always the same… They iver didn't know who he was or didn't care because he was errors son. Eventually i tried to ask reaper to confirm if he was even alive and to my happiness he said yes, but then he went quiet. I asked him what was wrong and he told me not to go looking for that child because all he will bring is misfortune and death. I was horrified but not at the child but at reaper for trying to stop me from looking for my nefw. We fought and argued for days until he finally gave up and told me where he was but with a condition. If i bring that child back, then reaper and goth will leave. It was an almost impossible chose to make but i chose that child over my own family, so reaper took me to where the child lays. ---Gradients pov--- I flinch as i stare up at geno with broken gray eyes, he makes a move to come close but i scurry away as much as i can before collapsing again from lack of strength. After that he chose not to come closer instead he sat down and stared at me. I eventually build up the courage to speak and as my voice echoed in the white abuse i said. “who are you?” ---Geno pov--- I was shocked to see this child, he looked just like error but more pale and thin, it also looks like he hasn't slept in days. I move closer to pull him into a hug but he ran away almost like i was about to hurt him. I hesitated but sat down to try and make myself look smol and less threatening. It must of worked because moments later he spoke* “who are you?” “my name is geno, i'm your uncle” “u-uncle g-geno?” “yh that's right, you're safe now i'm gonna take you home.” I smile at the child in a comforting way as his eyes fill with hope and tears, then out of nowhere he hugs me in a accepting way and it was in that moment i know. I finally saved someone. ---Other Discripchion--- (not mine) Gradient is a teenager (14) and he tries to act older than he is(evident of his speech) but he HATES acting his age because he doesn’t wanna be seen as childish. He also has the unique ability that whenever he becomes extremely flustered/embarrassed, his form will start to bubble (much like a lava lamp) as his form starts to change from a solid to a liquid.When Gradient travels through the multiverse, like his father (Ink), he keeps an AU log.  He likes to learn about the different AUs before his dad (Error) destroys them. When Gradient is with strangers, most often he might slip and act his age.  However, when he’s with his friends or people that knows him, he will do his best to not act his age. Gradient doesn’t need to sleep (because he was born in the anti-void) but on certain occasions he will.  Otherwise he rarely sleeps. When he does sleep he most of the time has nightmares  Gradient has Haphephobia, like Error, he has a fear of touch.  So strangers he ESPECIALLY hates touching him and even if you’re already one of his friends, he still doesn’t like to be touched but he will tolerate it. If Gradient were to receive a gift (and he has so we’ll use the MP3 Player for an example) he would selfish and NOT want to share.  He would fear that it would be taken away and he would never get it back.  (Kinda linking this to how Error was never around when he was a kid and he doesn’t want something precious, gift or parent, to slip through his fingers again. Plus he’s a teenager so its kinda natural for them to act selfishly here and there. Gradient has heard of AUs and timelines that have made it to the surface, but he has never encountered one before. He also is very naive.  He’s not familiar at all with human things or the world above. (Ex: His friend Rip offered him cake once, and he didn’t know what cake was.  He was asked if he owned a radio since he likes music but he didn’t know what a radio was) Gradient is also a pacifist.  He does not like to fight.  However, if the situation absolutely demands it, and if he is pushed over the edge just enough, he won’t hesitate to protect what he cares about. Even to this day, Gradient longs for Error to accept him as his son.  He doesn’t hate him and he won’t ever be able to since that is his dad. Gradient doesn’t believe that someone can come to love him because he sees that he has so many problems that he doesn’t seem himself as a desirable catch.  (His glitching, his eating habits, how he destroys his creations so willy nilly, etc) Gradient also has a fear of touching things that are nice or pretty because he feels that anything he touches could destroy at the slightest touch of his fingers.   Gradient gets jealous of other people’s artwork and it may come to the point where he wishes to destroy their work. Gradient, despite being the eldest, still has a lot to learn about the world. He lived in the Anti-Void his whole life, so he knows nothing about Earth or any human or monster customs. He's very curious and not afraid to say what's on his mind at any given time: he loves to learn about the different AU's before Error destroys them, and keeps an AU log. He also has the unique ability that whenever he becomes extremely flustered/embarrassed, his body will start to bubble (much like a lava lamp) as his form starts to change from a solid to a liquid. Gradient loves to create, but is a perfectionist, dubbing his creations 'hideous' before promptly destroying them. ---Relashion ships--- Paperjam Paperjam is in the middle in terms of age, but definitely acts the most responsible. Gradient admires PJ's resolve and confidence in himself despite the odds being stacked against him. He tries to help PJ take care of Bluescreen and offer his support in times of need. They're very closely knit: Paperjam considers himself the protector of his brothers. Gradient is thankful to have PJ there. Bluescreen Bluescreen is the youngest of the three. Gradient likes to challenge him to contests and games to try and boost his confidence. He doesn't like seeing Blue lonely, as Gradi himself knows the feeling all too well. So he spends as much time as he can with Bluescreen, often asking him to help out with a project. Oftentimes their escapades get out of control, which ends in getting in trouble with Paperjam. Ink When Gradient was born, Error immediately rejected him, whereas Ink took him in. When nothing is too busy, Gradi likes to visit Ink in whatever part of the universe he happens to be in. They know all each others' ins and outs: they're very similar in personality. Ink likes to spend most of his free time with Gray, while Error fawns over Paperjam. Gray tries to include Bluescreen in as much as he can, which Ink deeply appreciates. Error Error hates Gradient with a burning passion, avoiding him as much as possible, and at one point even attacking him for visiting without permission. Gradi, on the other hand, wants Error's love and acceptance more than anything. He tries fruitlessly to prove himself. He wishes Error would love him, and is angered by the fact that he won't accept him. But despite that, Gradient still loves his dad, even if Error will always loathe him.

[shinrakirigaya]