#or just bogeyman

[sasster]

What IS That Thing?

Can you guess what ICP song is on this guy’s playlist with what was provided?

[Doc] —

The lights are out when you return to your hive, not just turned off, but actually smashed out. Small piles of broken glass near where the lamps live, only partially lit by the light in the hall of the building as you enter, indicate that much. Maybe the lights in these hivestems have a tendency of just exploding with very little stress put upon them, it has only been a few perigees since you moved into the place after all. At the behest of everyone that heard about your campaign to dethrone the local regional ruler.

Not many trolls possess that sort of audacity, at least not the ones that aren’t also fleet aligned. Dethroning those guys is a little bit like pulling teeth, or, more appropriately, getting rid of a bedbug infestation in the hive of a hoarder. Short of burning it all to the ground and starting over from scratch, it is always an uphill battle. But doable. Certainly doable. Actual Empress-fighting would be punching a little bit above your weight class, but you think you can handle a little skirmish with some run of the mill general. It should be a no skin off your nose sort of situation. After that, you’ll be able to put in place the sort of guidelines that will see that the people who live in these areas won’t have to deal with the mistreatment. The fight is only in a few hours, you’re amped, and there is no time for second guesses.

With caution you step around the broken glass and make your way into the small kitchen space that shares an area with your living room. It is a far cry from the near palace you were raised in, but laying low is important. The local regional ruler will have your head if they find you, and you’ve done so good to shake off their muscle thus far. What a shame it would be for it to all come to pieces now.

You sit in a stool in the kitchen and sigh, relaxing into a slump against the wall as all of the stress of the day starts to roll off of you in a wave. No one told you how stressful it would be to run this sort of campaign, but that might be just because it goes without saying. There is so little time between now and the fight, but you can’t show up to it wound up all tight like this. 

A creak in the floorboards draws your attention to your bedroom, and a cold dread pricks at the back of your neck. Did you shake off the muscle? Could have just been the building settling. Slowly you pull yourself to your feet and take deliberate steps back to the bedroom, stepping around piles of glass still while you do, and equip your trident in the process.

You call out toward the sound, “Hey, man. Whatever you’re getting paid, I’ll double it. Just get the hell out of here,”  as you near the door, using your weapon to slowly poke it open all the way. “Or I can kill you, it really doesn’t matter to me.”

The intruder is sitting on your bed when you enter, with a face obscured by a mask that appears to be smooth with some simple designs, from what you can see lit up by the dim moonlight. They angle their head toward you.

“They sent a laughsassin after me? Really?” Your laugh is breathless.

The intruder laughs as well, it is a mirror to yours, but much higher in pitch, and absolutely sardonic in nature. “I always get that. Laughsassin,” he bemoans as he stands up and stretches, there is something incredibly uncanny about the looseness he handles his own limbs with. “It’s outdated. Implies that all I do is kill and laugh. Which, alright, I won’t lie. It does take up a big chunk of what I do.”

Dealing with a clown today was the last thing you thought would happen, it was your understanding that GHBs don’t typically put their noses into the mess of seadwellers trying to kill each other. Isn’t it a net-zero loss for them, at the end of the day? But now that you’re thinking about it, they might just be happy to stick the old ‘the devil you know’ addage.

“Sometimes, I’ll have you know, I’ve also been known to convince.”

“You want me to believe you aren’t here to kill me?”

“I am here to let you know you’ll be taking a dive later this evening.”

This time when you laugh, it comes from sheer shock. They sent a clown.

To tell you to give up in your pursuit of the regional title.

They must be scared.

With his hands on his hips, the clown takes confident strides around the bed and closes some, not all, of the distance that separated you. Your grip tightens around your weapon.

“How about I kill you now, and then your boss later?”

He bounces on his heels. Why is he so flimsy?

“Or you can leave here with your head attached to your body, and watch from the crowd. I’m not taking any bribes.”

He comes to a stop within striking distance of your trident, you can make out two faint lines that curve like tear tracks down the cheeks of his mask, but you hold firm, watching him carefully. He stretches again, bending his body at the waist until something pops audibly. “Oh, I’m not here to bribe. Did I confuse you? The dive you’ll be taking will be the swan type. Y’know? Into your grave.”

In the time that passes between the words leaving his lips and confusion contorting your features, something else hits you, literally — A small blade, tossed with such precision that it slices through a bit of your cheek and ear on its way to embed itself in the wall behind you. “Y’know?” He echoes.

You are already advancing on him with your trident when the gears start turning in your head, and the springy bastard ducks out of the way of the attack and dances behind you with another laugh that suspiciously sounds like it’s still mocking yours.

Clowns are the worst. You didn’t even see him move to throw the damn thing in the first place. A frustrated growl rips out of your chest as you turn to face him.

“That’s all? You’ll need to do better than that if you’re going to scare me out of it.”

It’s hard to tell what he’s going to do next, without being able to see his face, which you gather is the whole point, but he’s already rocking back on his heels, reaching back to get a grip on his knife. He practically cackles, “You’re right,” followed by pulling the thing out of the wall. It doesn’t matter that he has his hands on his weapon, you think, without the element of surprise, a throwing knife loses the fight to a trident every time.

Smugness settles in your breast as you pull yourself to stand a little straighter, having found the confidence to make it through both of the fights the stars have set out for you this evening.

Then, the smugness quickly dissipates when the nuisance does something completely unexpected, and tips his mask up to uhm.

Well, it looks like he is lapping the blood, and bits of drywall but whatever, off of the knife.

“Why do so many fish carry a trident, anyway?” He asks and though you’ve instructed your body to lunge with the subject of his criticism, you stay rooted in place. A sinister glow begins to spill out around the edges of his mask. “I always thought it was a bit on the nose. You know? There are other weapons. Bet you’d have fared better with a harpoon gun.”

His words fly over your head, you are more concerned with your suddenly immovable body.

The masked intruder stays where he is, stretching and bending his freakish form while in the meantime your own disobedient body once again closes the distance between the pair of you. Your mind is racing. You’ve come so far, your aspiration right within your grasp, just to be killed by a clown.

His knife comes up to your cheek, where he’d already cut it before, and from the angle his mask sits at now, you can see two rows of sharp teeth exposed in some form of twisted grin. It is almost worse that the rest of his face is entirely concealed. He presses into the flesh and more of your blood is drawn out onto the blade.

“It’d be really nice of me to kill you just like this, y’know, but the boss wants to make an example of you. No hard feelings, right?”

[kithj]

happy friday the 13th here are some spooky text-based games for halloween:

contrition - As a priest, it’s your job to listen to your parishioners’ darkest secrets and absolve their guilt. But when a sinister stranger comes to the confessional one Halloween night, you realize it’s your soul on the line.

familiar - You are a familiar. Your mistress has some requests for you. Help her complete her ritual, or pay the price of failure.

jagged bone - A branching choose-your-own-adventure horror game about transformation and perspective. 

the forest of candles (and the man with a lighter) - follows Maggie, a young woman with a fear of forest fires sparked by an old town folk tale. She's spent years trying to escape her hometown and the fear it inspires in her, only to be called back for the funeral of an old friend.

mary's hare - Mary's Hare is short interactive horror story about a woman and a rabbit, based on the story of Mary Toft.

only this - "And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming / And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor..."

what girls do in the dark - a slumber party text adventure.

god is in the radio - you are death, one of 22 members of the major arcana, a cult dedicated to some far-off god. the night is halloween, and you watch in scorn as the unknowing dance among devils and dress to indulge in sin. the high priestess receives a message from the all-mighty himself: the arcana must gather in an abandoned house and find his song on an old radio receiver.

anchorhead - Travel to the haunted coastal town of Anchorhead, Massachusetts and uncover the roots of a horrific conspiracy inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft. Search through musty archives and tomes of esoteric lore; dodge hostile townsfolk; combat a generation-spanning evil that threatens your family and the entire world. (illustrated version on itch.io)

my father's long, long legs - An interactive horror story about family, unease, and loss.

beneath floes - Qikiqtaaluk, 1962. The sun falls below the horizon and won't return for months. You wander the broken shoreline, wary of your mother's stories about the qalupalik. Fish woman, stealer of wayward children: she dwells beneath the ice.

the silence under your bed - An interactive horror collection about the strange, the spooky, and the macabre. 

bogeyman - You can go home when you learn to be good.

[mymarifae]

i just want to share my thoughts about akito and Death. because even now—even off the back of an event like burn my soul—people STILL talk about him like he's an explicitly depressed, suicidal character whose every action is cause for concern.

i think the idea that akito is suicidal has been floating around for a very long time. and while it's not entirely without merit (more on this in a bit), it's still a misconception. and it really feels like kashika exacerbated the issue. which is unfortunate! it's sad to see such a beautiful song be misinterpreted like this.

now don't get me wrong! kashika is about death. but two things:

1. kashika may have been written for akito, but it's not just for him. it's also deeply personal to ryo haruka. there are certainly similarities and haruryo undoubtedly understood everything akito felt during the events that led up to the crawl green incident, but i don't think it's entirely fair to equate his very real emotions and struggles to those of a fictional character. he and akito share kashika! you can interpret it through either lens, but trying to do so through both is where things start getting messy

2. whiiiiich leads me to my second point. who decided that the only way to interpret kashika and its themes of death is literally?

i think it's pretty common for people to automatically interpret any themes of death literally—or at least very negatively. we're naturally conditioned to fear death, and then we're taught to fear it even more. it's the change. it's the unknown. it's the very idea of an "end." most people aren't very fond of these things! understandably so. but personally? i think the symbolism that can exist behind death is beautiful.

Death is the 13th card of the major arcana. above all else, it symbolizes change (positive change; it's always, always about what's ultimately best for you). Death tells you it's time to move forward; this part of your life is done. there is more waiting for you—new opportunities, new experiences, a brighter, more fulfilling future—but you must be prepared to let go.

the habits and routines you have now? the mindsets that have kept you alive? your current sense of self? whatever it is, whatever Death is asking for, you have to let it "die." it won't serve you anymore. it will only drag you down. and it might be terrifying and you might not be able to comprehend what lies ahead and you might want to kick and scream and struggle, but you can't cling forever. endings are never easy, and sometimes they hurt like hell, but with each end comes a new beginning.

and yes if you've read burn my soul this should all sound very familiar lol:

looking at death from this perspective, kashika and the entirety of find a way out should read a lot more like akito caught on the cusp of a monumental transformation. suspended between "life" (the old) and "death" (the new) so to speak.

up to this point he's been fueled by spite and desperation. two very intense, very negative emotions—but it's an intensity that worked. everyone else on vivid street had years of musical experience, and he had 0. he needed to catch up and he needed to catch up quickly because it's not like he could put the whole world on pause. he could take his time to learn the basics, sure, but every other vivid street musician would continue improving and growing while he did that. there would always be a gap between him and Them.

unless... he worked harder—WAY harder—than all of them combined.

and maybe that wouldn't do it either. maybe he would be stuck in place forever, always playing catch-up, always struggling to stay afloat, always being left behind. he knew this. and he knew the amount of destruction he'd end up inflicting upon himself if he went down this path. but in his mind, it was okay. it was worth it. because he'd rather die endlessly pursuing what he loves most than live not trying at all.

but in find a way out, when facing off against his old bullies, he starts to realize that he was wrong. he's not just stuck in place. he bridged the gap a long time ago, and he almost didn't even notice. and where he's going now, spite and desperation are the wrong emotions to sing from. he needs to let the unhealthy, extreme mindsets die, but also it's hard to let go of something when you would have given up a long long long LONG time ago without it.

but with time, and enough poking and prodding from ken and luka, he does it. he lets go. he lets the old parts of him die, and he passes on to the next stage of his life.

akito's character arc has always been about growth. improvement. learning. Becoming Better. and not just in a musical sense although Yes That Is A Huge Part Of It. his arc is also about his growth as a person. it's about him becoming more confident, and learning how to be kinder and more patient with both himself and other people. it's about him learning how to let his walls down and let his loved ones in. and to trust that they won't start kicking him to death once they're in there.

it's about him learning to exchange the Spite and Desperation for Passion and Love.

it's about him becoming happier.

which is why it's so fucking startling when people talk about him like he's suicidal and on the verge of a breakdown. like, woah, what?

as i said though, kashika isn't the only source of this misconception and i find more merit in the other sources because they're actual aspects of his character and scenes in the story and not song lyrics that shouldn't have been read so literally in the first place. like, yeah. we've seen a ton of unhealthy behavior out of akito. he's had a very extreme perspective on his place in the world from a super early age, and while the severity frequently gets exaggerated in fanon spaces, the shinonome household isn't exactly sunshine and rainbows.

he's been moody, he's been prickly and abrasive, he's lashed out. he keeps most people at arm's length and builds walls so high not even toya can get through them at first. he had to! he wouldn't have survived if he didn't! like, he was targeted and bullied by a group of adults when he first started singing on vivid street. that is actually a genuinely traumatizing thing to happen to a kid!

so no, i'm not against the idea that akito has experienced depression and suicidal ideation in the past. kinda comes naturally with the territory he ended up in. but that's the key word: past.

i get confused when the idea is dragged into the present. because again! the whole point of his character arc is he's overcome all that PAST adversity! recovery isn't linear but we're not about to see him hit rock bottom any time soon. or ever, actually. you know why? because we've already seen his rock bottom. stray bad dog. that event was his big breakdown moment. that's what opened him up to try to start healing.

we're not getting another stray bad dog. stop expecting another stray bad dog.

he's alright, i promise. he's growing up. he's gotten better. he knows he belongs in vivid bad squad. he knows he's loved. he knows his friends will be there to catch him when he falls. he's always been strong, but now he's even stronger. he's excited for his future, and i think we should be too.

[sweetlullabyebye]

Top 3 times where Oswald Cobblepot was the most unsettling man ever:

[hrokkall]

Always good to see you too :D

Did you know that while developing the film Prince of Egypt Dreamworks would punish animators by sending them to work on Shrek instead?

Inscryption is Gamefuna's Shrek

-🥊

I did know about that! Though with Inscryption being both a cover-up and a fairly isolated project, I'd imagine it would be more of an office rumor rather than an actual NPC designation. Like "You'd better do your job properly; I hear there's a position open in Inscryption" or "Wow, that looks like shit; did you pull it out of Inscyption's asset folder?". On account of the liability, it's more or less just an office in-joke; people don't actually get reassigned there...

...Most of the time.

[featherlouise]

Thinking about Hollow having to deal with childish fears on their own

Like, yknow those fears most kids have about monsters in their closet n stuff

Like maybe they'd overhear a noble telling their kids to "be good, or the Grimm troupe will take you away!!"

And then later on they lie shivering on the pallet in their room that can barely be considered a bed (bc only people need beds, after all) and they WANT to go tell their father how afraid they are, in fact they want nothing more than to crawl into their parent's bed like their sister says she does whenever she's scared.

But.

If they do, their father would know they aren't pure. And who's to say he wouldn't just toss them back into the abyss if that happens.

Just. Irrational childhood fears warring with the very real (at least to them) possibility of being tossed aside. Their desire for comfort warring with their fear of what their father could do to them. Both loving and fearing their father and having no idea what to do with those feelings.

[shih-coulda-had-it]

I have an idea. Afohiko from the pov of Sorahiko's tired roommate who's just trying to exist despite Sorahiko's horrible taste in lovers. The idea of coming from work, seeing some shady looking guy outside your door and being like: You here for Sorahiko? He'll be back in a few. Please don't trash anything. I'll make tea.

counterpoint: recovery girl used to be sorahiko's roommate because he didn't care about her random schedule (life of a doctor, but ramped-up), but she eventually stopped signing a lease with him because he kept having horrible taste in lovers.

*the villain in the picture is adding "kora" to the end of his question, which is kind of the icing on top of the "totally looks like a villain" observation

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

also its really fucking telling that you think lesbian = terf. trans men and cis men cannot be lesbians. lesbians do not and cannot fuck cis/trans men. really insane that y’all see anything about lesbianism excluding men and automatically think it’s about.. women? i don’t know why y’all are so fucking obsessed with weaseling your way into a sexuality and gender identity that is exclusive of men, it’s almost like you hate it when ppl want to be away from them. lol

Oh it’s the TERF again lol.

I don’t associate lesbians with TERFs, but responding to someone mentioning trans issues with essentially “god forbid lesbians have anything” is the most obvious TERF calling card you could leave because we weren’t even talking about lesbians.

[nerdyenby]

I am having Thoughts about the parallels between DL and Limited Life Scott and Martyn.

From the get go of both of these seasons, people were making groups and finding allies all around them, but these two ended up alone.

Scott struggled to find his soulmate in Double Life and got increasingly discouraged as more and more people found their partners around him. Eventually he got tired of waiting and decided to make a bond with someone he chose and someone who chose him: Cleo. When eventually Pearl and Martyn came back to finally meet their soulmates, they had moved on. Their destined partner no longer wanted them, and this drove a wrench between the two. Soon they no longer had each other either, and Martyn was alone.

Starting Limited Life, Scott didn’t have any alliances off the bat, but everyone else did. While he was off preparing, everyone moved on and established alliances, leaving him in the dust. Similar happened to Martyn. They found each other, agreed to be allies, and went back to gathering resources independently as they were before. Only for Martyn to catch the bogeyman curse. He had already been excluded from the server’s established groups, who most people were sticking with at the time, and he only had Scott. If he went back to Scott, he could be consumed by the curse and lose the only tentative friendship he’s managed to make, so he stays away, running in the opposite direction until he’s able to satiate the bloodlust threatening to consume him.

Of course, he can’t tell Scott why. He can’t tell Scott anything, not with the urge to kill pumping through his veins. So Scott knows nothing except for the fact that Martyn said he’d be back and he isn’t. He was abandoned. Again. A near perfect reflection of the first episode of Double Life.

[celestialvexation]

bitches rlly went "i can excuse simping the rapists and murderers that partakes in beastality, necrophilia, and pedophilia, AND shipping them together but i draw the line at shipping them with their victims"

like are you fucking kidding me, y'all?

[see-arcane]

Darkness suits you, Mr. Harker -You or Count Dracula

"Jonathan Harker should be more fucked up, I think. He should have some fangs, a little bloodlust. As a treat to me."

Me 🤝Count Dracula

[melchinafan]

That conversation between Devinder and Jacob about Dev being inspired by Hansel and Gretel's breadcrumb trail for his Translocate device (plus his planned heart-freezing gadget) has really pinged something in my brain in the best way. It's so simple to take it as a sorta silly thing, with a dismissive "oh ha ha it's just a kid's story" and the like.

But for me, it feels like a way to show that he really Gets It.

Stories have power. It's typically more metaphorical, in that they help us internally process and understand ourselves and the world around us. They can be a way to pass on so many types of information via oral traditions. They can change how someone looks at the world. They can save lives. Long or short, silly or serious, they're transformative. They're a social connective tissue.

But Dev harnessed that power in a more literal manner. One way to approach how he did it is also fairly straightforward—that he simply used these stories as the inspiration for incredible invention(s). Which is fantastic, and good on him for using such a creative springboard for his gadgets! (In contrast, some of the alpha-vampires used local Redfall legends as their names, trying to leverage that power for themselves. They were able to use it against the locals for fear-based manipulation, but the powers they have were stolen from the Gateway, not from borrowing those names. The fae these fools are not.)

But then—and this is swinging around to Secret-World-Legends-flavored shenanigans—you can also approach how Dev used the power of stories in a deeper, more bizarre and magical way. Certain stories, certain tropes, might sum up certain "rules of the universe" that we haven't been able to scientifically quantify yet. (Sort of like how stuff such as "toast always lands butter-side down," or "you're always going to forget to pack something you need on a trip" can feel like they're unwritten "rules" of How Things Work.) It's taking the phrase to mean that stories sometimes literally explain the world around us—we just need to figure out how. And Dev's been able to pluck out some of those "rules" that have been stitched within longstanding stories, and figured out how to harness their implied power via gadgets.

It strikes that sweet chord in me of "art as magic"—or art as magitech/gadgets, in this case.

Stories have power, sweetlings.

Tell yours.

[trans-blake-thorburn]

wish that i could clarify that my username is not in fact referring to blake (the protagonist of pact) but in blake (which i have chosen to headcanon as the chosen name of the original thorburn heir specifically so as not to spoil the multiple people currently doing livereads). however that would defeat the whole point of having this username in the first place so i will just have to be content with looking like i have an entirely different headcanon than i do

[telekinetiq]

on a serious note (this will go into the eventual pinned post I’ll be making for this blog later about public vs privately known info, but until then-)

98% of PKMN fandom muses shouldn’t know about Mewtwo’s existence unless

they’re in the highest ranks of Team Rocket (essentially Gio or the execs) or somehow have access to that top secret classified intel

was involved in / contributed to his creation (although 99% of everyone close to the project died)

they’re a legendary / mythical pokemon, more likely if they’re from Kanto or Johto (but even then very likely for them not to know)

it's already been established between us OOCly that they know each other / have a connection, either from interactions or plotting

a character established in official canon to have met Mewtwo (i.e. Ash / Red, Gary / Blue, Mew, etc)

otherwise the most they’d know are very vague rumors / urban legend stuff about a mysterious creature that lives in the caves and secluded areas of the world, particularly Kanto and Johto

[theflirtmeister]

Uhhh uhh ur mark/adam was good so maybe some noncon (or dubcon) hoffheight somnophilia with pre-established chainshipping in the background???

i am a big fan of this!!!! adding it to the spreadsheet

[vryivs]

ive decided to be more transgender in public