#it's also in a semi haunted house in the middle of nowhere. so like. vibes

[welcometogrouchland]

Yeah man I got the sleepover essentials (three dvds- moulin rouge, the mummy (1999) and gnomeo and Juliet)

[spritehouse]

are the different writing styles in some of yalls fics because it’s different alters writing them? Or is lex the only writer and I’m just imagining things

I don’t know if your open to questions about y’all’s system if y’all arnt just ignore me

we're open to questions. if you ever ask something that whoever's fronting doesn't feel like/want to answer, they'll leave it for someone else, and if it's something we don't want to answer because of boundaries or something, we'll say that, no harm done. it's a common sense rule—if you wouldn't ask a singlet about it (but like. in single terms. if that makes sense) don't ask us.

anyways, it's a mix of both, i think. those of us that do write have semi-different styles (though we do try to stick to a certain "vibe") but also just all of individually are just Everywhere.

lex focuses on small details. he writes a lot of imagery, setting, body language, etc. the rest of us do this when it's necessary for the story, but if you see like. 3 paragraphs of just imagery, probably lex. he's also incredibly nit-picky about things.

for example, lex wrote the intro (and most of the rest) of rest your bones:

It’s cold in the unsub’s cellar.

Not the cold that comes from over a week of Virginia showers as fall fades into winter, bringing flooded flowerbeds and overflowing rivers, or from a starless night in the middle of nowhere, standing in front of a house out of a horror movie, but a bone-deep chill that comes from exploring a crime scene that sets even the seasoned agents on edge as they search the suffocating space, the usual horrors of their jobs barely holding a candle to this.

i (tori) write a lot of just stream of consciousness stuff. admittedly, that's how most of us write, but my stuff tends to focus more on how a character is feeling, their thoughts, and how they present that, with minimal editing.

pre-knowing what's was going on with The System, lex called this the "dissociate and come back an hour later to a brain dump fic" method

i wrote a lot of the what used to be mine series:

Aaron Hotchner is at a loss.

Give him a serial killer, kidnapping and torturing their victims, an arsonist, or a hostage situation, and he’ll handle it without breaking a sweat— he’ll be the hero. But give him a grieving son who won’t talk, eat, or do anything besides lay in bed, staring at the wall, listening to his late boyfriend’s voicemail greeting, and he’s in over his head.

and ghost writes a lot of dialogue. it does write scenery, body language, etc. but if you see long stretches of dialogue, that's probably ghost (or someone else just trying to get through an unavoidable conversation. all of these are circumstantial)

for example, in destroyed everything in spit us out:

“Can I see him?” His voice is hollow and haunting, guilt hanging off the edges like a weight on his chest as Luke stares at his hands.

“I’ll ask, but your doctors want you to stay in bed and rest for at least a day.”

He doesn’t argue, simply nodding silently, making Emily shudder internally, seeing Luke as a mere shell of the man he usually is.

“I think they’re right. I should rest for a bit,” Luke grabs the thin hospital sheet with his less injured hand, pulling it over him like a protective shield. “I’d like to be alone now. Thanks.”

others do write, but we have the most distinct styles and write the most. but also, the lines between us can be blurry, especially for lex who rarely completely leaves the front, and they can overlap and we can write like each other, so it's probably be inaccurate to use this as a guide to see who wrote what, but it's the best we've got

our writing is a collective effort, so we don't "claim" works as our own. it can be helpful to know who wrote what to follow their thought processes, but we're all working towards one goal and no fics belong to just one of us.

sorry for the long winded answer, i'm actually procrastinating writing right now👍🏼

-tori🪶

[mythicallore]

Bizarre Encounters with Pale Humanoids

Of all of the unsettling denizens of the paranormal that could pop out of the darkness, one of the odder has to be the pale face of a humanoid creature beyond description, eluding all attempts to categorize it. These gaunt, hunched over specters seem to haunt the fringe of reports of the mysterious and supernatural. Yet there are countless such reports coming from people from all walks of life and from all over. Here is a selection of various reports of spectral, deathly pale beings that are humanoid to some extent, but most certainly not human, circling out past the boundaries of the truly odd.

One witness brings us the story of an anonymous Reddit poster who says he had a very spooky encounter in 2006 in rural Arkansas, in the United States. He claims that this happened when he was only 12 years old, and that he had lived in a modest house nestled on around an acre of land out in the boondocks, surrounded by dim woods and its only tendril to the outside world an unpaved dirt road meandering off through the trees. Making the whole scene even spookier is the alleged fact that there was a big old abandoned slaughterhouse somewhere back in the wooded area, as well as the remnants of some burned down house owned by anonymous parties long since gone. Whether this had anything to do with what was to come or not, the witness describes the whole area as rather “mystical and special,” as well as “odd in general,” and that his encounter would happen one evening when he went out to lie down on the outside trampoline after an argument with his parents. It was just him and that big sky with a full moon framed within it, and he says of what happened next:

So I’m laying on the trampoline, and other than the moon there isn’t any light aside from the porch light which is a ways behind me. All of the sudden I vaguely see something move. Its coming from the lot across from the dirt road, and its coming towards me. We had a Boston terrier at the time and at first I figured it was him. But as it got closer I knew that’s not what it was.

 It was sickly pale. It walked on all fours with its hands but seemed to be able to walk upright. Its kind of galloping towards me on all fours and its a little bit aways at this point but getting closer. The light bounced off of its skin and it almost seemed to look wet. Its gait and color is pretty clear to me but I don’t remember anything distinct about its face except that it just seems to be whitewashed to me. It’s happening so fast and now it is right near me still running and then I can’t see it. It’s under the trampoline. And then I feel it, I feel it PUSH up on the trampoline. I didn’t even bother to look back as I ran to the house. I don’t remember my thought process at all past that point but my mom has told me that I came in the house hollering and absolutely terrified.

 I’ve thought about this consistently over the years and as I’ve gotten older have seen stories of similar creatures. I used to describe it as looking like Gollum from the LOTR. I think of the creature kind of fondly in a way. It would never have occurred to me at the time but it almost had a playful vibe to it, and it makes me sad to think that it’s just some lonely but semi-intelligent creature. Maybe a grotesque experiment or some off-kilter evolutionary line. I don’t think that’s impossible. I guess I like to let my imagination run wild with it though. I will always be curious about this and the place in general.

It is hard to know how much stock to put into Reddit reports, but there sure are a lot along the same lines. Another poster at Reddit /r/paranormal gives his own freaky encounter, for which he even supplies photographic evidence. This supposedly happened in 2012, at an undisclosed location at a close-knit friendly barn community in a rural area of the United States, surrounded by dim woods laced with small, scenic trails. The witness says that his two horses were kept on the property, which was near his home and which he would visit ever day to care for and ride around through the peaceful scenery. One evening he had a startling experience as he rode one of the horses, of which he would say:

One evening, around 5pm, I was sitting on her, letting her stand when she started snorting and backing up. I looked up and saw this white/grey creature crawling out of the woods towards us. It had a very small round head, it’s eyes were just pits. It had a very small mouth, not much detail there. It’s arms were very long and thin, fingers also like that. Its rib cage was very pronounced and defined, and it’s legs were long and lanky.

Its movements were very jerky, not smooth and fluid. It slowly jerked out to us, when my horse turned and bolted out of the arena. She’s a dead broke, calm, well manners horse who never spooked before this. Stubborn old mare, but not spooky. She would not go back into the arena that night. I walked her around the barn yard, staying near the main barn, put her up, and ran out to peek into the arena, to find nothing except some “foot prints” where I saw the thing.

This would not be the end of the sightings of this odd creature, as the witness says it would lurk around the dark periphery of the property all through that summer, often peeking around the gate that led out into the woods. On one occasion he saw it running along the other side of the fence, keeping up with him and the horse. It was eerie to be sure, and the witness continues:

I continued seeing it, mainly in the woods, but it was always around. Summer 2013, the barn shut down when the owner died. We moved the horses to a friends place for the time being, and I didn’t see it there. Late summer/fall 2013, I found a new barn. Woods directly behind the barn and arena. This place had lights and was much newer.

About a month later, when I was getting ready to leave I heard something in the woods, I looked down the barn aisle into the woods and saw the creature running down the road into the woods. I saw it much less frequently for a while, until later in fall 2014 I began seeing it in the back pastures woods, it darted in and out of the tree line.

I saw a second one sitting in a neighbors yard, it would sit in the same spot every day and watch me ride.

Started taking pictures, which are very poor and crappy, and sent them to a friend who claimed he and some others have seen it. Kept seeing it occasionally, but from a much greater distance than at the first barn. I went with this barn owner to another farm to get some stuff, when I saw a very very large version of this creature run out from the woods, right behind a tree I was 10 feet from, while I was alone by the trailer.

Last November, I house sat for the barn owners. I went out around 2am to fill water troughs and enjoy the full moon and cool night. I was sitting in the back pasture when 3 of the creatures began coming from the woods, one came up to the trees near the trough where I was, the other two were walking along the tree line. The horses were silently munching their hay, pretty far from where the creatures were. I messaged the guy from earlier and told him what was going on. Since that incident, I haven’t really seen them. Last summer, I did see one outside my house staring into the windows. A few weeks ago, one was outside my bedroom windows tapping and making a strange faint shrieking sound.

Unfortunately the pictures don’t really seem conclusive at all, and we are left to wonder just what was going on here, if anything at all. Another Reddit poster gave his own report of a strange occurrence at a rural country house when he was 15 years old. At the time he was apparently in his bedroom on a very dark night, and was about to close the blinds to the window when he caught a glimpse of a “pure white almost glowing man/thing” glaring at him from next to a nearby pine tree. He would describe what happened as follows:

It was crouched down kind of in a spider-man pose and I believe it had larger black eyes. Not like something you see from the greys but it was a feature that stood out to me. It was very muscular, I distinctly remember seeing well defined arm muscles, it seemed just very muscular in general. It wasn’t too thin it was just strong looking. I don’t know how tall it was because it was crouched down looking up at me. I don’t remember if it’s head appeared larger than an average humans head, but I remember it was very bald.

 When I saw this creature I screamed for my mom, she came to the window and saw something that startled her too and ran downstairs to our back porch and yelled “who’s out there! Come out!” I remember standing behind my mother nervous with fear. We went back to my room and looked out the window and it was gone. I have this weird feeling that someday I’ll see it again. I’m not sure why, I just feel it.

A very similar report was posted on The National Cryptid Society, and was given by a witness in the Midwest United States. The report again concerns pale, humanoid things wandering about the dark outside of windows in the middle of nowhere, and the witness says:

When I was in 6th grade, I looked out the living room window and saw a white reflection. My mom grabbed a flashlight and looked out the window, she could see some white animal crawling around on the ground in the clearing by our house. It was approximately raccoon-sized, but white and apparently able to get 3′ up to the window. The next morning, before sunrise, I was letting my dog outside. He ran out the garage door and began barking and growling (completely out of character for him). I stepped around the door frame and saw an approximately 5′ tall pale being with two huge, glowing eyes and some form of round glowing item where a mouth or neck might be. My sixth grade self screamed, turned, and ran back inside, leaving my mother and dog out to fend for themselves.

By the time my mom figured out what happened and I calmed down enough to come back out, the thing was gone. To this day, I’m terrified of the woods surrounding their house at night. When I visit, I leave before sunset or have someone walk me to my car. It has been over 15 years. I would also like to add that I don’t believe in “aliens” or “ghosts” or anything, but I have no clue what these things were.

What are these things and what do they want? Was this a ghost, an alien, some sort of unidentified animal, or what? Our next account was provided to the site Phantoms and Monsters, and supposedly happened at Big Bear Lake, California, in 2017. The witness claims she had just checked into a Best Western motel in the area at just after midnight, and was going to her car to get her luggage when she had the fright of her life. According to the witness, it was very dark and was cold and snowy, with her just wanting to get her stuff and get in out of the cold. She says:

It had been snowing and was extremely dark, my car was facing a country road. When I hit the unlock button on my car, the parking and interior lights came on. This allowed me to see two eyes reflecting in the middle of the road, about 10-15 ft from me. At first, I thought it was a deer, I have lived in Colorado and I’m accustomed to seeing wildlife.

 I instantly stopped and remained still as I didn’t want to scare off the what I thought was a deer. As my eyes glanced downwards, I noticed it wasn’t a deer, it looked like a white, hairless naked man on all fours. It was at least four feet in height, on all fours. Probably around 15 ft if it stood up. There was a brief moment as our eyes made contact. It then, as quickly as I have ever seen any animal, turned around, ran as fast as a cheetah away from me and then, straight up a tree. I was frozen in disbelief. I said out loud to myself, “you have to be flipping kidding me”. Just as I was going to convince myself that this couldn’t possibly be happening, it leapt from tree top to tree top and I could see it’s full outline as it did so.

The speed and strength it had is like nothing I’ve ever heard of before. The creature was definitely solid, it appeared as if it was coming toward me, possibly hunting me? I don’t know what stopped it. Was it the lights that went on? It had no visible genitalia. it had a very human like qualities. None of this makes sense to me, the speed, agility of the creature and there shouldn’t be anyway that the treetops should have been able to hold the weight of the creature. It appeared to be flashing like a TV going in and out of reception as it sprinted up the tree. It also didn’t appear to disrupt the foliage as it did so.

Besides hanging out in the shadows and woods of rural properties, similar pale humanoids have been encountered on roads as well, where the lane lines come flickering out of the gloom to go racing back into the night. In a report to the July 15, 2016 episode of Coast To Coast AM, a caller named “Nate” gave his experience while driving along a desolate road in rural Illinois. He says that he is a truck driver, a profession that has numerous brushes with the paranormal, and on this night he was heading east on I-80 through Illinois. He would tell Coast to Coast:

I had stayed the night, well, the afternoon in Des Moines to get some sleep and I got a fresh eight hours of sleep and I had just got on the road. It was about dusk and the sun was just about to set and I was driving and I seen a figure just ahead of me on I-80 and it was right on the side of the road. When I say right on the side of the road, I don’t mean in the grass. Its toes were right on the white line. I slowed down a little bit to kind of see what was going on there and maybe avoid it. When I got about fifty yards from it. I got down to about 50 miles per hour and I could see it clear. I had my brights on and everything. It was a man. Well, it looked like a man about maybe 5’9 or 5’10. Couldn’t have been more than a hundred pounds soaking wet. And when I got up to him he looked at me and George I kid you not, he had no eyes, no mouth, no nostrils. There was no orifice on his face. He was pale white. No hair. No features whatsoever. There was a… It looked like a skeleton with bleached white skin. He was just kind of standing there looking right at me. I slowed down and as soon as I seen his face, he looked up at me, boy, I flipped the hammer down from Illinois all the way to Chicago. I never looked back. My blood ran cold. My hair stood up. I was one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever seen in my life.

Another such account was reported on Reddit by a witness who says his frightening encounter happened on Christmas Night of 2007, at a lakeside community in rural upstate New York. The festivities had worn down and at around 8 PM the witness took off in his car to a friend’s house. The place was only about a 10-minute drive away and the night was clear, so there would have been no reason to suspect that anything would happen in such a quiet and peaceful place, but things would quickly take a turn into the weird. He would say of his harrowing encounter:

As I drove, I noticed what looked like someone walking up ahead on the opposite side of the road, coming in my direction. Mind you, I was still going about 20 mph the whole time, so it was probably less than a minute by the time the “walker” came into clear view. I got a quick scan of it from my windshield before my car and it were exactly parallel.

 It was not a person. It stood on two long legs, with long arms hanging down from its shoulders. It was strong looking. Lean, muscular, but not beefy in stature. It looked thin at the same time. It stood at least 7 foot tall. It was light coloured: not sure whether it was white, tan, yellow or greyish. It didn’t appear to have fur but there was some texture to the skin- it wasn’t smooth. There appeared to be something coming down off its back. I don’t know what this was. All I can recall about it’s face is the small features it had but the mouth and jaw were notably large. And it had pointed things atop its head- 2 things going straight upward with something mingled between the two things. That’s what I got from a quick scan and from my observation of it as it neared my car and my car neared it.

 As my car became parallel to it within a split second, I went from looking out my windshield to looking at it from my drivers side window. In that moment, it’s face quickly peered down at me and all I remember was the mouth opened wide. Out came a remarkable scream that I’ll never forget. Gives me the chills just thinking about it. It consisted of a high-pitched shrill/shriek, enveloped by a deep guttural growl. Both sounds happened simultaneously in that scream.

 I kept driving all the while. This was all happening so fast that I didn’t even have a chance to be scared or shocked or anything. I continued driving and went past my friends house and drove home. Called him to tell him what happened and that I just needed to get back. I was probably running on adrenaline to get back home. Later on, I was in total shock after it sunk in. Had my drivers side window been opened fully, it would have touched me, or worse, taken me. I’m certain of it.

Another account from Phantoms and Monsters tells the story of a witness in Canada, who had at the time spent the evening laughing and talking with friends until the wee hours of the morning. At 4:45 AM he decided it was time to head home, and got into his truck to begin the 45 minute drive back to his place. In between his friend’s town and his own there was reportedly a pitch black forested area that took around 10 minutes to drive through, and after almost hitting a deer on his way in he decided to slow down and take his time getting through this tangle of trees. He would say of the series of bizarre events that would follow:

As I approached the exit of the forest there is a left curve in the road and an adjacent dirt road with a white wooden fence lining it going up a hill to what I would imagine would lead to someones property/home. As I was making the turn I seen something in my headlights (Brights) at the edge of the fence. It was a tall pale milky white creature with a bald head. It’s eyes reflected back. Clothes-less . It’s arms and legs just as white as its bald head. I seen it for a second or two as it made a move to dive behind the fence.

 I braked and backed up slowly and pointed my lights at the fence looking for any kind of movement. I was parked on the highway which was abandoned at 5 am. My heart was racing and I didn’t know why. I must have sat there for a minute before I calmed down, didn’t see any movement and decided I better not go and investigate or maybe I’d become a missing person and continued my journey home. So the only description I have of this “thing” is tall,pale, bald, and human like features, but no noticeable hair or eyebrows.

Such entities leave us wondering just what any of these people could have possibly seen. Are these ghosts, aliens, demons, or just the products of addled, tired minds? There are numerous encounters that cover a wide spectrum of such pale, humanoid beings, and as I have said I have covered such reports before, so are these related and what could we be dealing with here? Considering the very unearthly undertones of such reports, one might be inclined to think that this must surely be aliens. After all, how could something so innately bizarre as these pale, crouched monsters be anything of this world? One possible explanation for the pure outlandishness of these stories is that they are some sort of inter-dimensional entities or trickster spirits, that for whatever reasons find themselves here for unfathomable purposes and agendas. It was an idea championed by such esteemed paranormal researchers as Jacques Vallee and John Keel, and Keel himself would once say of such bizarre beings that seem to defy any conventional classification:

One basic fact should be obvious from the foregoing – these entities and things are not necessarily from some other planet. They are actually closely tied to the human race, are a part of our immediate environment in some unfathomable fashion, and to a very large extent are primarily concerned with misleading us, misinforming us, and playing games with us.

Is that what this is? Are there entities from beyond the fringe of the odd that are paying us a visit to taunt and manipulate us to inscrutable ends? How else can we explain these totally otherworldly reports and their crouched, pale denizens of our nightmares? How else can we possibly fit any of these accounts into our reality? Unless, of course, they are just pure fabrications? It is difficult to say what the case may be, as these are eyewitness accounts beyond the scope of out ability to verify or corroborate, but if they are in any sense real, then they leave a lot to question, and flitter about out in the domain of the truly strange.

[thanatophobix-blog]

🖊 + all do it coward

Yelling about my OCs // ACCEPTINGRabbit, you are a fool and so am I. I’m just gonna, like… give a headcanon per OC on this blog under the cut.

Achilles - His semblance is called Disconsolate. It makes others able fully feel what he is feeling, from absolute sorrow, blind rage, to pure joy, right down to the last ounce of pain he gets from a paper cut. It can take over other people’s rational thinking processes and make them react as he would, which is often never good (and leads to his death).

Alexus - She doesn’t have any real senses, even if she says its a simulated thing, she has none. She’s a cpu program! HOWEVER, she can still smell charred flesh from when her girlfriend shocked & burned to death. It’s burned into her mind even though her mind can no longer comprehend what a sense is.

Artharrachadh - Doesn’t actually like 7/11 or gas stations, they just give off the vibe he strives for in life. The mystery, the scandals, the robberies. It’s so out in the middle of nowhere that its perfect. Although, thanks to 7/11 he developed an addiction to slushies. Cherry/blue raspberry, for our god of liminal spaces, baby!!

Cas - Her powers have limits. Without her power retaining equipment (essentially, a choker, two bracelets, and two ankles), she would have ripped herself into shreds after a few usages of her powers. Her speed could send her cells into different dimensions, her ‘pyrokinesis’ could set herself on fire since she is not impervious to fire, and if she uses her luck too much, karma returns the favor with brain bleeds.

Cephriel - As angelic as they are, they are more monstrous and demonic than they’d like to admit. They eat sinners alive for nourishment, but it is all for the holy conquest. Plus, the more souls they consume, the stronger they get. The stronger they get, the quicker they can accomplish the holy conquest.

Dolores - She really wanted to get back in touch with her son but she could never find him. She went back to LA looking for him only to find that he’d been adopted and shipped off to Germany. She felt so, so horrible. It’s her fault that he was sent off to a totally abusive household and she lives with that guilt so, so horribly.

Dominique - Has never once acted like a true criminal, more like a robin hood type figure. He doesn’t kill, he doesn’t hurt, he doesn’t do anything like that, the worst he does is steal from the rich and give to the poor. Either through charity donations or through mysterious wads of cash showing up at people’s houses. However, since he steals from the rich and not the poor, that makes him evil for the media.

Eirian - Has never been one for conflict. Avoided school drama all throughout high school (minus his tiff with Lizzie which was created by him being an idiot). Now he’s running from town to town with an eldritch being chasing after him with so many guns in the back seat of his truck its almost fucking criminal. He’s learned, so, so much combat things that it scares him. He’s practically a weapon himself.

Erik - Has the hardest time keeping the ‘we’re all monsters or demons’ secret a secret out of all of Clearfall’s citizens, and he’s the one that made the whole thing happen. Lucky for him, Corey Booker, the human reporter, is kinda dense. Unlucky for Erik, he thinks that Corey is hot shit and would gladly sell him his soul to stay in Clearfall. But, for Corey to stay in Clearfall, he���d have to be turned into either a werewolf or a vampire but he doesn’t want to do that because Erik’s both a wimp and doesn’t wanna hurt

Eva-Marie - In Hell, everyone wears the sign of how their died. People shot have their bullet wounds, knife wounds, the blood loss makes you incredibly lethargic and cold, sickness makes you permanently sick and tired, burning makes you always feel like you’re on fire, and maybe you are! But Eva-Marie doesn’t show signs of her death, or at least, not if you’re not paying attention. She has perfect posture and never lowers her head, the thick choker on her neck is blood red, sometimes she starts choking and coughing up blood. She was killed via beheading, and she takes perfect care to make sure that her head never falls off.

Fane - Has extreme commitment and attachment issues because of how many loved ones he has lost. He couldn’t save… anyone. When one of his last surviving relatives, his great great great great hella fucking great nephew, Lucas, died, he was there. Fane was teaching him how to drive and they got in an accident because Lucas couldn’t take his fucking foot off the gas because he was scared shitless and they got whacked by a semi and Fane has never, ever forgiven himself for that. Or any other of the deaths.

Florian - Is destined to become fully evil, and will thrive in that evil. He was never meant to be a florist, to live and survive off of cuddles on couches and cheap pays for a good job well done. At the end of the day, he has a strong sadistic streak that was never fulfilled as a child. Florian is all smiles and no substance on the inside, and was going to kill himself if he ever had to live another second in that flower shop doing nothing, that’s what the explosion was, an attempt to end it. Now? He’s soft and sweet on  the outside as a cover, and on the inside, he’s ready to seduce your husband and blow up your house.

Fritz - Doesn’t need to sleep and doesn’t sleep. You see, on his home planet, people move so fast that sleeping was essentially something of a social death sentence. Entire empires would rise and fall while one of them was asleep, your wife could start another family and leave you behind because you would be out cold for another millennia. SO! To bypass that, they engineered a serum that would alter their chemical makeup so they’d be constantly producing energy to replace sleep.

Henri - Does not miss being a royal. She knows that the second she gets back, she’ll be forced into an arranged marriage with a guy who a) she will never love because she is a lesbian to every degree and b) she hates anyway, the guy’s a fuckin’ douchebag to every degree. She just wants to stay in NYC with the punk rock and the grunge and the Crownweaver gig with her punk gf, Dex, and never look back.

Jack - Used to be a Team Spectre Admin. Dated Salem for years, was there when the whole team got launched under Salem’s reign. They were really, really into the whole thing too, believed that the world would be better if they could just wipe everyone’s memory clean and start over with the same people, but have everyone listen to a group ‘concerned about their health, their sanity and their well-being’. Eventually realized that it was all bullshit, all of it, shit, bullshit, and that Salem? Asshole! Shit boyfriend, shit person, shit… just shit. Left, went legit, went good.

Julia - Knows everything about you. She has no clairvoyance or telepathy or omniscience or anything like that, but she knows everything about you. She has connections, her connections have connections, she’s met practically everyone in town and if she doesn’t know everything about you when you first meet? You can be sure that she’s going to hunt down someone who at least knows something. She’s incredibly well informed, scarily well informed, and also good at social cues.

Kennedy - Killed a man in university. It was her first kill and by far, her favorite. The rush she felt, the understanding of why people murder for fun, it made her understand. She had a knife on hand, took it out of the restaurant she was eating at just beforehand and completely forgot about it, but she was glad she had it. She gutted him, top of the chest all the way down to the lower stomach, and she hanged him from a fire escape by his own intestines. He was coming onto her and she was not about that life, rest in peace, fucker.

Klaus-Michael - Has a really hard time hiding his job from his father, aka the Spider-Gold job. Yes, his father is in Germany and Klaus-Michael himself is in NYC, however, it is a requirement between the two that they have a video call once a week. He comes home after fighting off an army of bad guys with so many bruises and so many cuts and dings and busted lips and broken bones and casts and oxygen tanks that his dad should be suspicious, especially since his dad is a genius. But, Klaus-Michael always seems to have some sort of excuse tucked up his sleeve.

Liz - Finds Atlantis. She does! With help, she arrives, and, unlike the dis.ney movie, there is no one alive. Skeletons line the streets of the drowned city, the location is crumbling, and she is horrified. The haunted location gives her the creeps the second she is in there, and for good reason, because something  is watching her. Not something living, but machinery, and once it catches up to her, it brands her on her side for the rest of her life. A marking, a warning.

Lizzie - Has slight celestial heritage. Didn’t think Arhkangelskaya was chosen as her last name for a reason? It was! While she doesn’t have archangel blood per say, she has guardian angel blood, and that’s what brings her back (her ghost back) from the dead to look after Eirian’s dumb fucking ass. The guardian angel blood comes from her great grandfather who was her great grandmother’s guardian angel, ever since then, the arhkangelskayas have returned as ghosts to the person they feel needs the most help.

Lori - Is destined to die at the age of twelve. In a way, she feels invincible because who in their right mind would kill a child? She thinks, that, because she’s so young, nobody is gonna raise a finger against her when she walks in to kill them, because she thinks that they don’t think that she’s going to kill them! And then, one day, she realizes that everyone is an assassin and assassins don’t have rules, assassins just want money. And, on that day, that is when she dies.

Lukas - Is not out for anyone but himself and his town. If you die, and it’s his fault, it’s not on his conscience. He’s not here to fix your problems, even though he fixes way too many of them anyway, he’s here to get the money and go. He’s here to get enough cash to either buy enough medicine to last him and his hometown years and years and years, essentially ridding them of their poisoning, or, he is going to use that money to entice scientists to search for a cure. He’s tired of having slag course through his veins, it hurts, more than he likes to admit.

Lux -  Is not impervious to fire. If she emits it from her body, she only does so from her hands for this reason, she’s not some hum.an tor.ch lookin’ chick, she’s completely human to every regard and her powers are created by machines. She can use her powers of vibrating molecules to a frequency on objects that she is not holding that are within close range, but she can also ‘set the air on fire’ (more like oxidation). She doesn’t realise this, but its how she makes her fireballs. The palms of her hands are incredibly scarred.

Madeleine - Killed a man in self defense and nobody will ever, ever know about it. Or, at least, she hopes so. She doesn’t want anybody to find out about it, because she knows that she’d be sent to jail. Sure, it started out as self defense when the main pulled out a gun at her at semi-close range in an alley way after a case where she sent a criminal away for life and she stabbed him through the heart with her rapier. It was when she took the gun and the sword and started going overkill with panic that it became less about self defense and more like making sure that that guy would never come back. She got an old friend with connections to clean the scene.

Marque - Isn’t trying to provide chaos to provide the world with equal opportunity to rise from the ashes and anarchy as a new, better evolved race, he’s doing it so he can control Giratina and take over the Reverse World. If he takes control of the pokemon, then he is also, by default, the master of the Reverse World. If he allows other to live within the other dimension, he will become their leader by default. And, by causing chaos in Kalos, Sinnoh and the other regions, he will have more and more people wanting to move into the Reverse, gaining more and more subjects and more and more power.

Matthew - Will not be able to survive if he ever leaves the Entity’s realms. His body is emaciated beyond what should be humanly possible (not like the hag is, more like he’s 6′4″ and 90lbs) and he’s surviving based on the Entity alone. His blood is complete and utter drugs at this point and he’s fragile. He’s skeletal, but in the same way that b.ane works, the drugs kind of give him a boost? They give him the strength to keep moving, but he will die if all of them ever get out because he was only a little better than this before he got into the realms.

Myles - Is suffering from unknown internal damage thanks to the facial scar that he is unaware of. The deal with this is, the scar pushed the outer layer of metal inward and, while it hasn’t damaged any of his inner workings yet, if anything happens to his face… welp! A good hit to the cheek, falling head first, anything like that will push the sharp metal further inward and damage his internal wiring. This could potentially be fatal depending on how hard the hit is, or how many times he gets hit. He is very stunned after a good head injury.

Ollie - Is a little hypocrite His whole episode is about the importance of not doing drugs, but in itself, the episode really leans towards how ‘some drugs are good’. Big companies will gladly sponsor a tv show into corrupting the minds of children to think that certain drugs are alright to take by hiding information about them, just like the tobacco industry in the past with cigarettes. Ollie, the pill bottle filled with prescription drugs, may say that some are bad, but he himself offers the pills he contains to the members of the show, getting them addicted, like a fucking hypocrite.

Richard - Wants to move onto news reporting on television, but is held back by Thomas. Their personalities are incredibly similar thanks to the method of their creation, but Richard’s has always been a little bit louder and more personable and much, much more suited for news reporting. He’s always taken to celebrity incidents more, so he’d be suited for something like…. eta.lk or en.tertainment toni.ght. Plus, wouldn’t it be fun to report a death on tv that you caused?

Salem - Does not understand that he is in the wrong. Like, you know how some villains understand that to do some good things, you need to break a few eggs? And they deal with that guilt?? LIke uh, shit, like Negan had guilt on cheating on his wife and all that, like they can realize that they’ve done bad shit? Salem is so insecure that he projects all guilt and anger and anything wrong onto other people. World falling apart? People losing their families to memory loss? Not his fault, all yours.

Shae - Never wanted to be the hero. She’s watched too many superhero movies to see how it all turns out. Metr.oman? From Meg.amind? Yeah, she doesn’t wanna turn out like that, but she knows that she’ll burnout from all the people saving and all the heroics and that one day she might just have to kill her best friend so as sunshine-y as she is she’s always dealing with this black cloud that hangs over her head and heart and it hurts her that the world is always so in danger and she can only do so much. She wants to have a break.

Sinclair - Has never lived for himself. He only ever helps others. When Jack disappeared, he took it upon himself to defeat the Team Spectre residing within the League. He took over so that people could still experience the League even though he didn’t actually technically become the champion. After all that happens, he leaves to go help others because he has nothing else to live for, he doesn’t know what to do but help. Even as a child, he poured himself into others rather than building himself up.

The Boys - Used to travel the world to sate their hunger before fully settling in their new home, a now dead, formerly economically booming, rural town that still sees some people coming in. When they travelled, they were not known as the boys, more as The Figure, as they did not hivemind as much. It is only thanks to their new setting where they take place in the high school like to eat teenagers that they hivemind as seven different boys (the most they can manage with having separate personalities and appearances while still being connected).

Thomas - Once tried to have a family outside out of Richard without Richard knowing to see what it was like. They aren’t connected other than their purpose, so they share no hivemind, just basic personality. He soon realised that a family would not be for someone like him, as they would always die before him, leading him to fake his death so it’d make human sense. He lost track of where his descendants are now, however, he doesn’t care because he’s dependant on Richard.

Virgil - In Agents of Mayhem, Virgil becomes M. Squelette, the title gained when becoming the leader of the Ivory Skeletons. Either way, his Saints Row verse, he still was a member of that gang, but he left the gang life there to move to Stilwater and then got rescooped into it. He has a lot of Saints ink, the fleur de lis and all that shit, one on his neck, y’know. However, he has a piece of Skeletons ink that he refuses to blot out because its… really nice. Like the tattoo artist obviously worked really hard on it and as loyal as he is to the Saints, he also has a large respect for the arts so there is no way in hell he’ll blot out something so nice looking. Besides, he can just pass it off as something he got when he was drunk considering that he never talks about his time as a Skeleton to anyone.

Woodland - Learned how to ‘speak English’ thanks to the dying screams of the people she killed and ate alive. Some people would try and bargain with her, others would just string together a stream of ‘shit’s and ‘no’s. Of course, this doesn’t help when learning English, as you only learn certain words and all their connotations are fucked and disjointed. She tries her best though. Also, she doesn’t actually have a name. Woodland is just a term.

Xander - Found out that he was a god when he didn’t die when he should have. By all means, he should have died. He was in a car accident with some sorta not really friends (all his other friends were in the other car, thank gods) and all the other ones died horrifically. Someone got flung out the windshield and into a tree, someone stepped out of the crash and got hit by a passing truck, when the car caught on fire, two people were stuck inside. Only Xander lived, but he was in a hospital with wounds that should have never healed, but they did. He then got a message from his fathers telling him about his true parentage.

[sole-cuore-amore-e-droga]

Tel Aviv 2019: Straight outta Czech Republic to Eurovision with an unexpected geographical sight name

Another year, another Czech attempt at a national final that wasn’t televised also BUT this time we got some excitement announcements out of them - even if they were blatantly boring, kind of.

Keep in mind though that I know that the revamp's out, BUT this whole review is just me reviewing the version we all witnessed back when ESCZ hit. The one and only.

So the NF’s here because we saw Mikolas succeed from it the last time (eventhough it’s just a secret internal selection for just the Mikolas’s song and there’s no no denying hihihi), right? And thanks to that we got pseudo-official-but-not-so-official hotel music videos of each contestant’s songs just in case they decide to... like... change it for something different. Like those lyric videos last year. Eventhough they looked so very lowbudget this year, I still liked them to some degree, and eventually I had to witness this one video (set in presumably mostly the living room) where the lead singer confettis all over himself win this year (well not really the video as much as I only got to first hear that song on ESCRadio hahaha). Well, just the lead singer of it. As the buddies were on the other official video (the one I’ll talk about in my revamps update I guess but has anything changed other than the singer singing one of his talking parts?). As a whole the Czech entrants this year are known as Lake Malawi (it exists) and “Friend of a Friend” is their A-game! Let’s listen!

I liked it ever since my first acknowledgence(??) of it through ESCRadio. It reminded me of those happy-clappy 80s synth sounds (eventhough the 80s songs were mostly about gloom and doom), somehow somewhat mixed in with a bit of that ‘modern’ synthpop sound from the British music scene (Years & Years maybe? Nah that’d be too far-fetched). The lyrics, while cheap enough, at least paint a bit of a picture? I don’t think the person in the song was “making love” to his ‘old’ neighbouress back when she was 13, anyway. She’s, afterall, the “friend of a friend”. Who is a friend of a friend. Who is a friend of a friend. Who is a friend of a friend’s COUSIN~

The thing is that some songs out here are enjoyable besides their lyrical content. Or even without the singer’s background (still looking at those who’re shading Sheppard’s family business - shut up and enjoy “Geronimo” in peace, geez!). I, for example, jammed to RiRi’s “S&M” for my lifetime - yes, even since when it got big, and the pop music was being made to sound trashy, and not like something that sounds too somber and ‘foggy’, and with lyrics from r/im14andthisisdeep, and then later slapped on those a e s t h e t i c moodboards with tulips and liquid (of colour blue/red) splashed onto them to make it loof more effective, and placed in front of a yellow background on a white table. I miss late 2000s-early 2010s pop a whole lot, because at least it had fathomable-to-the-ear hits of the time - cheap, fast food, techno melodies with overproduction and lyrics that actually mean something more intimate and grotesque (with sometimes even hinting to the love surface) - that was the shit. Now it’s just drowsy stuff with blurry melodies and lamentings of lost love and devotion in an equally slurry, pathetic, vocal whine. I’m so tired of it. It’s unsettling. Get it off me. And thankfully, none of that invades this small little bubble of Eurovision’s just as of now (unlike the other pathetic musical cliche of nowadays that’s Soundcloud rap - ‘thanks’ a lot USNK). And I guess I shouldn’t be blessed that Lake Malawi brings this “this bangs but the lyrics are... a choice, but it still bangs so idc” back onto Eurovision? Like, come on, we all have had such kinds of songs like those all of that time. From “I Can’t Go On” (a man being a slut for love???) to countless of national final shlocks made by these usual suspects from rent-a-songwriter corner, ESPECIALLY in the 00s, to some of those actual 00s entries that made it - so stupid to sing along to, yet so infectious you can’t drag your earworm out of your ear canals just now. What does “Friend of a Friend” have for itself? Keyboard melody in the 2nd half of the chorus that is easily stuck in MY head, with a female voice (I assume it’s the song’s protagonist’s subject of speech - the neighbourina herself) reassuring that “[she’s] only [his] friend” - not in a “haha I’m friendzoning you forever >:)” way, but “ehhhh there’s truly nothing between us as he says, we’re just friends, not lovers, don’t give me that look” way. Sure it’s believable, sure. It might as well turn out that these neighbours are indeed doing the same thing as in all those local anecdotes where a family’s mother or father has an affair with a next-door neighbour for shits and giggles to move the joke’s plot forward.

So it is, as a whole, a fun little throwback-ish piece of fine and smooth music, accompanied with the lead singer’s ‘British’ ‘accent’ (aha so this is why I get a lot of British radio vibes from this - not to mention, tropical beach ones too for some reason!), some sort of spoken dialogue, energy and the ability to raise you up from your seat the 45875th time you’re actually giving in to all of this. You know you want to, despite this song possibly not being your cup of tea. But I see you, and I look forward to seeing you bopping to this fully in May, no matter if this isn’t Mikolas you’re dealing with anymore, and no camel spaghetti. Ahw yeah!

Approval factor: Although it’s also slowly wearing off me like it already wore off everyone else back then, I’m still giving it one hell of an approval. Yay!

Follow-up factor: I definitely like it more than “Lie to Me” as well. Somewhat. Honestly. Don’t bash me in secret.

Qualification factor: the naysayers are saying this will flop but imo they’re mostly just upset that Barbora didn’t go (even if they were only still upset back in the say), STILL. Ugh can’t they just leave. I am positive about this song’s chances somewhat, just hoping it gets a really memorable and stand out staging and maybe it will escape this hellhole of its semi. Not very confident, just positive. (Also they rocked the Vidbir stage so hard even the uncomfortable question queen Dramala couldn’t not give in the dance, lolz.)

NATIONAL FINAL BONUS

Honestly, the best possible thing that came out of this NF was the oh-so-unexpectedly-expected winner choice, and it is like this because, yet again, people couldn’t get over Barbora losing at first, to which I’m like “to be quite honest, you were all into it because that’s the closest thing to Lana del Rey you’d ever get in Eurovision because Lana herself is American and America should NOT set their foot into ESC... besides, she wouldn’t probably do it anyways”. ESCZ wasn’t pretty bad of a NF honestly:

• people actually laughed at the fact every single video of this NF is so low-budget that it looked like it was all filmed in the same hotel room! (in reality I’m just jealous at the slick-ass hotels they’ve had on there, feels like someone’s house more than a hotel actually)

• Pam Rabbit, one of Mikolas’s last year’s backings, brought the second-best NF song this year imo (Barbora for me is likeable but not to THAT degree, lol calm yer tits), as it was a lowkey bop and I can’t not appreciate one!

(her officially official MV is here but in the spirit of this NF’s, you’re gonna have to subject yourself to this above in order to witness spectacular budget-MVs that happened for this NF especially, come on. Hardly a cool NF without its own little perks!)

• Fine, I’ll bring up Barbora Mochowa too. I gotta say she DOES sound like Queen Bee Lana, same to say on her earlier works which, among them, has one enchanting and haunting forest-like ballad. “True Colors”, her ESCZ entry, is just a pop ballad, which is not THAT bad, it’s just that... did y’all see any more in that song beyond the Lana vocals? Sure sure the melody is pleasant but... did ya?

(Lord alive, she also has a live video for this song on her channel, which is in fact the ESCZ’s unplugged version video!)

• The ex-ESC entrant jury is back for another year! This time though, the votes of all of the participants in it were all up and public (unlike secrety mcsecret ones from 2018 where I’m not even sure if the Eurojury panel was correct), and most of them were #TeamMalawi or #TeamBarbora... up until AWS (yes AWS are relevant enough for their own panel!), being the “wait do we still have to do Eurovision related things??? it’s sooooo 1 year ago already, let us go goddammit!!” type of participants that they are, totally and utterly half-arsing their own experience in there by 12ing Andrea Holá. The thing is that she’s first alphabetically from the artists so that’s probably the best possible theory why. “GIVE ME A HINT, ANDREA!!!”

• The best part? The NF itself taking place in the second floor of an abandoned warehouse somewhere in Czech Republic (Czechia go to hell), in the middle of the day, with no live performances, just that video above played in full motion and some random people speaking in between. Silly of them to leak my ideal NF design location if I ever were a Lithuanian HoD. And yes, it was streamed on Facebook, the platform that I can barely play livestreams on my 11-year-old laptop on, while suspiciously enough, it worked for FiK 56... which meant that I was barely able to grasp a screenshot but I managed!

Well of course I didn’t get to watch much but after someone said Lake Malawi (or, in their words, Lake Malala <333) won, I almost believed it until I found out that the show’s still going... and only saw the thing on the projection screen later out of nowhere. IDK who’s hugging who and if that audience on the right are all the participants then I may have an idea but for now IDK. Ahh, relevant video media being projected on projection screens (duh) <33 giving San Marino, Albania’s Powerpoint scoreboards and Belgian 2013 radio NF runs for their money.

I might find mistakes and off-the-wall blabbers in this write-up later but for now I’ll carelessly submit this beauty to Tumblr today and wish the best of luck to Lake Malawi in Tel Aviv! May you qualify for the 2nd year in a row for CZ ^^