#panic in the dev pit

[teledyn]

About that AI code you got…

This could be good (if anyone cares)

If AI art is public domain, that's fine anyone can use it in whole or in part, but CODE used to train their bot will very likely contain code licensed with a GNU Public License, which REQUIRES the containing product to also be GPL… as will be all future code CONTAINING that code!

Have we discovered something brutally effective?!

These days, given copilot etc, increasingly it will be highly unlikely any given piece of code did not contain any AI generates, and therefore itself be GPL, and thus that day approaches when, in this regard at least, Richard Stallman finally wins?

[nalooksthrough]

Dale Dimmadome Analysis (with screenshots)

Dale is one of my favourite characters on the show. He's a funny evil man, that amuses me with his antics and his role as a child slave/kidnap victim in the original series leaves a lot to be explored.

This analysis will be talking about his attachment to money which trust me is a lot more interesting than it sounds. This will be quite a long post. I'll put a cut under this paragraph, so that the people who aren't interested don't have to scroll through the whole post.

Going to assume that since you decided to keep reading, that your interested in what I have to say. This analysis will only be covering "Stanky Danky" and "Lost and Founder's Day" with a brief mention of "Operation Birthday Takeback". I think those two episodes are more than sufficient enough to convey my point.

When we first meet Dale in "Stanky Danky" he's seen coming down from a helicopter, onto a big stage to sell products to people. He appears to be level headed with confidence oozing out of him. But this changes the moment he realises that people aren't going to buy anything.

He almost immediately starts to panic.

He starts shuttering as he calls out to the crowd to buy more things.

His panic becomes anger. Briefly switching back to panic before fully settling into anger. His anger then becomes targeted at the person whose telling these people not to buy from him. He questions who this girl is, what's her name.

Once he's learnt her name. He starts thinking up a way he can stop her and get the customer's interest back.

And once he's found it he strikes.

Going as far as to kidnap Danky and emotionally manipulate him just so he can get what he wants.

Leaving the monster in an isolated area of his estate when he's not of any current use to him. I mean talk about becoming your abuser.

And when Hazel and Danky leave he rushes out calling out to the trash monster, saying that he was "like a son" to him. Trying to appeal to Danky's emotions, desperately trying to get him back. All so he doesn't lose that source of profit.

And when he starts losing all his profits at the end of the episode he falls to his knees, wailing in a fit of despair. He's obsessed with money, he needs it and he's willing to do anything to get it. This obsession of his is best shown in "Lost and Founder's Day"

He spends the first portion of the episode happily monologing as he explains how his Dim Watches "tickle" a child's brain to indicate when they want something. Everything is going exactly as he planned.

Until it isn't.

The moment he spots someone not buying anything he starts getting angry. Ranting at the screen.

His anger only growing more when he realises that this "anomaly" is stopping other people from buying things too.

And when Dev points out that stuff is still getting sold and they are still earning money. He shuts him down.

Stating that while yes people are still buying things. The profit he's making from the festival in going down. And he is not happy about it.

In fact he's so enraged by this that he starts to send drones and his son after it so that he can "learn it's secrets". He can't handle the idea that someone doesn't want to buy anything from him.

And when that doesn't work, he activates the statues. Putting the whole festival on lock down until he can track down the "anomaly".

And when a drone points out how counter productive terrorising the festival attendees is to earning money and making a profit. He quite literally shuts it down.

And at the end of the episode, when the statues are put to a stop and everyone leaves.

He's back in that pit of despair. A literal stream of tears flowing out of his eyes. And he so affected by this that he spent literal months studying this "anomaly" figuring out why it didn't seem interested in buying anything during the festival. And the thing is. If he had just left it alone. The festival would have gone on without much of a hitch. But he just couldn't, because it was never about the money. Not really. It was about him.

It's clear that he puts a lot of value onto money. More than most. With money being tied directly to his identity and sense of security. The more money he makes, the better he feels about himself and when he starts to lose money, he takes it as a direct attack on him. He knows what it's like to have nothing and he doesn't ever want to be in that state again. So he obsessively tries to earn more and more in order feel secure in himself. But it's never enough. And when someone threatens that security he goes on the defence. Even at the cost of the losing other potential sales.

And when he loses all his profits and is no longer generating money, he breaks. And for a brief moment, he's no longer Dale Dimmadome owner of Dimmadome G0bal.

He's Dale. A frighten young boy working in a factory underneath a lemonade stand, whose only wish is for his father to come and rescue him.

[petrifiedperi-au]

I AM ALIVE AND I'VE BEEN HAVING SO MANY THOUGHTS LATELY ABOUT PETRIFIED!IREP AND ITS DEATH. Y'ALL HAVE NO IDEA... IDEAS AND THOUGHTS ARE SPINNING IN MY BRAIN MICROWAVE. OUGH...

HIM CLINGING TO ANTI-COSMO IN SOME OF HIS LAST MOMENTS BEFORE IMPLODING. It's been sitting in a specific spot in my brain for half an hour now and I NEED to subject you guys to this. MORE IN DEPTH BELOW THE CUT!!!

[AU info here!]

While Peri wasn't able to comprehend the fact that they were dying and going to explode, Irep was fully aware that he was dying the moment he felt it. A pit forming in his stomach that follows him feeling sick, which THEN follows his skin starting to burn and sizzle, AND THEN IT SETS IN. THAT HE'S DYING.

Imagine. IMAGINE. IMAGINE. The absolute PANIC and other rush of emotions that flood his mind when he REALIZES. PERI DIED. AND NOW IT'S DYING. AND IT DOES HURT. A LOT. AC is right there, of course, and so he gets to SEE all of this... [AND AW, of course!]

ANYWAY. ANYWAY. ANYWAY. IREP'S MIND BEING FLOODED WITH PANIC AND FEAR. And THEN he CLINGS to his dad! Because he's FUCKING DYING! And his dad clinging back... and also AW getting involved in the hug... AND THEN WHEN IREP IMPLODES, SHE FLOATS BACK A BIT AND JUST STARES, BEFORE AC GRABS ONTO HER AND PULLS HER CLOSER TO HIM IN A HUG-LIKE WAY BUT ALSO A VERY ANTI-COSMO LIKE WAY... JUST LIKE I MENTIONED IN THIS POST HERE!

ANYWAY. YES. This ADDS to why AC is fucking PISSED AT DEV! Not only did his son die, BUT IT WAS CLINGING TO HIM! Wing hug, even... wing hugs. MAYHAPS... SOME ASH AND METAL SHAVINGS AND A FEW BUTTERFLIES LAND ON/FLY AROUND HIM... AS A FUN SILLY LITTLE TREAT. He is PISSED!!! As he SHOULD be.

AHOSYSSISUD ANYWAY!!! I HOPE THESE RAMBLES MAKE SENSE!!! I need to beam EVERY daydream I've had about this into yall's brains. You NEED to see them how I'm seeing them OUGH... /silly

[fountainpenguin]

I'm sorry if I'm annoying you. But I can't get over you City Lights AU Dale. The man looks like he has all the issues and is hanging on by the thinnest thread. One more problem and he will just fully collapse.

😂 I'm eating your asks like sandwich.

^ He is overworking himself in a desperate attempt to make peace with the fact that he never got to hear his late father say "You did everything I ever asked without complaint; you are such a good son and you've made me so proud."

Push him near a goalpost and he'll panic and kick it across the room. We don't know how to process feelings of achievement and pride in this family. Those are Bad Emotions that will get the company steamrolled by competitors... You could lose everything... Is that how you want to be remembered?

I've been waffling on whether to share this WIP or withhold it for in-the-moment drama, but just for you... a treat.

His back ached from hunching; his feet stung from dirt. Vicky didn’t leave me down there; she always came back. “Do you know what that means?” Without waiting for an answer, Dale grabbed Timmy’s shoulder with one hand and pumped his fist with the other. “I’m still her bestie! She didn’t replace me!” “She locked you in a cellar for 7 years,” Timmy started, but Dale cut him off by slamming the bathroom door. And he laughed at nothing, clutching fingers in his hair, because… He really had to talk to her. They could clear this whole mess up! Now, let’s get one thing laid out crystal-flat. Dale knew Vicky had locked him up down in Dimmsdale’s tunnels, sure. He wasn’t stupid. But she wouldn’t have done that at all if he hadn’t threatened to tell untrustworthy adults about The Accident that kicked the lemonade business off in the first place, and it wasn’t her fault he’d been a disloyal friend. He really put her in a bad position there- That can’t be denied. Dale dragged his hands down his face (and dragged his butt down the door) until he thumped on freeze-dried tile. His toes gripped the bathmat. He wrapped his arms around his knees. I’m sorry. I’m sorry… I'll be better. I'm ready to listen now.

Prompt #96 - "You Deserve It"

My terrible headcanon is that if it took 7 years for Dale to work up the courage to open a trapdoor and crawl out, and he didn't file charges severe enough to stop Vicky from babysitting Timmy, he is not the kind of person who would stop hanging out with her SDLFKJ.

Also, here's a sketch I made for this post. I opted not to post it there, but I think it captures My Vision really well:

Toxic ex-BFFs with a very weird dynamic post-lemon pit torture, gossip buddies, and a secret 3rd thing... silly little guys.

He hates the fighting, but he craves the structure... Being nice to Vicky is the safe option... It's such big "Get real, Dale- No one will ever want to deal with you and your problems; I'm the only one who can put up with your baggage" vibes...

He can tolerate the bruises; he can make little exceptions; friends forgive each other and not forgiving her would mean throwing away the 3.5 years they had before the Real Trouble Began... Do u understand...

I've been brainstorming another WIP of Dale fantasizing about terrible things he wants to do to Vicky, but I'm not sure I'll actually write that one because it's pretty dark SLKDFJ

Listen, I just want Dale to slam Vicky against a wall and it turns out Mark was shapeshifted as her handbag and OH, HE PROTEC-

It's extremely important to me that Dale is nice and sympathetic enough that Dev believes if he can just pry his dad away from business, they can play and have fun. Dale being "sweet and engaging and loving" around his wife and during the holidays has done a NUMBER on Dev's psyche.

[rateaters-sutff]

All FNAF drama is like this:

\> Game dev, "The Slipster" creates a Fnaf fan game "Those 8 Nights at Zopster's Slop Factory."

\> The Slipster gains massive popularity due to their meme-ish and charming personality

\>YouTuber "Slamstest Yah!" covers Zopster's, criticizing gameplay and story while praising modeling and atmosphere

\> Both individuals have suspiciously furry rantsonas

\> Fans of Slamstest yah! go to Slipster's Twitter and threaten to kill and eats Slipster and their family

\> The Slipster @ s Slamstest yah! about the harassment and death threats Slamstest yah! gave them

\> Slamstest Yah! says they did nothing and accuses Slipster of punching down (Slipster has fewer bunger points than Slamstest Yah! but okay??)

\>Meanwhile a discord group of random Fnaf fan creators forms, calling themselves "The Gaggle" with the sole purpose of fucking over Slipster because he was pretty rude and selfish in their past fan game projects.

\> "The Gaggle" leaks all of Zopster's Slop Factory's assets and developer notes, as well as private DMs where Slipster called "B1LLR0xy" creator of FnaF remake "FNAF **-1/12**.", a "small unlovable glop with a trash game" and "ngl I think gungster#37 was right" ("gungster#37" is a controversial figure in the Fnaf community)

\> Slamstest yah! has no clue any of this happend

\>The Slipster starts a 15-page twit longer accusing Slamstest yah! of conspiring against him with "The Gaggle" to take him down.

\>5 minutes later, Slipster starts a live stream on his YT channel "slipZlop LIVE"

\>has a panic attack and begins crying live on stream, revealing a lot of extremely personal trauma to his audience of Slipster and Yah! stans, who all come to eat up the drama.

\>Slamstest Yah! DMs Slipster on stream and says he didn't orchestrate any of this.

\>Slipster goes on a tirade on Slamstest yah! and claims he should be sent to the deepest pit of the inferno, never to breathe anything but ash and fire

\> While this is happening famous offical Fnaf artist "Vensty Yummybunsty" comments "Gungster #37 was a mixed figure tbh" on the Fnaf sub,

\> Vensty gets backlash and apologizes, only for some random Redditor to go into their [timzbus.art](https://timbus.art/) page and it turns out they made infant cannibalism art and a Fnaf fanfic where William Afton eats 15 children.

\> Scott Cawthon materializes out of the black void between voids, grabs Vensty by the neck, and dematerializes with her, leaving swathes of black particle-like mist dispatching outwards in the air where the two figures were once was placed.

\> The Slipster starts a new stream where he comments on the dematerialization of Vensty and claims she was wrongfully dematerialized from our realm.

\>The 800+ FNAF content farms who have embedded themselves in the viscose flesh of discourse, all began to amalgamate videos describing word for word the entire cascading series of events that lead to this spiral point of pain and distress.

\>all 800+ content farms have suspiciously furry rantsonas and are 97% British

\> Slamstest Yah! continues making his Fnaf content and starts a VHS analog horror series called, "The Glerbs Reports"

\> Slamstest Yah! was later revealed to have eaten 15 children 2 years ago, jolting the twitching mess of the YouTube content farms to exsanguinate Slamstest Yah! pulling the veins rich in blood apart from the form, like pulling the thread out of a rigid carpet, weaving them out with so careful yearning, yet with such parched predation, as to leave dark hollow cavities where his circulatory system was once grown, a body now filled with devoided holes, and hollow smooth tunnels instead of veins that fit so snug and warm. All now pulled out and coagulating on the knees of which the creator of this work sucks violently at the wet plastic-like streamers. The corpse placed facing up, beamed by the sun, showing deep dots of drilled flesh. The animals sit and whip more ribbons to their tongues, cramming their mouths with veins palmed up and compressed to fit in between their cocked jaws, day after day they all sit kneed, pulling and balling the wrinkled tubes in their hands, to lastly entomb this dragging crumpled mess into the very back of their head by the gate of their teeth.

\> And when all veins gone, they bend forward their pale shapes, and lumber on.

\> Zopster's Slop Factory is still being developed, though The Glerbs Reports are still postponed

[sportsballs-the]

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Oh and also the content schedule for the week is here. Completely unrelated.

On Monday I'll be spinning the Roguelike Roulette once more! Metal Pipe Falling .wav sound effects are incoming.

On Wednesday we will be finishing The Roottrees Are Dead! This game turned out to be a sleeper hit, and I am unbelievably excited to play more of it. Plus I think the actual dev of the game will be there, so that's cool.

On Friday I'll once again be on the CTBOTC stream playing some Blood on the Clocktower! I really like this game, who knew. Come watch me panic really badly and get carried by Hallow again lol.

And on Saturday I'll be playing some Ultimate Chicken Horse with friends! This game was surprisingly fun, even though I expected it to be fun. Good odds you'll see the funny sheep doing victory laps, or the funny sheep saying he'll do victory laps before falling into the pit. Both are funny.

[caretaker-au]

The Right Thing 

INTERLUDE: JUSTICE

Certain aspects of Chara's job were... unpleasant. Unenjoyable, even. Perhaps they even felt a little bit bad. But. In the end, it was all for the best. It was the right thing to do. It was just.

Blood ran from the many wounds impaled through the late teenager. The more Chara lifted the body, the more of a mess it made. It wasn’t until Chara’s arms were slick with red that they began to second guess their approach. With a grunt they released the body, stepping back and attempting to shake excess blood from their hands. Hadn’t they hired Muffet to avoid this exact kind of situation?

No, they didn’t want to test Muffet’s patience so soon after the deal had been struck. It was a matter of courtesy to at least make the corpse accessible to her small minions. "This would not be an issue,” Chara muttered to themself, “If only I realised this device needed regular maintenance.” The retract switch on the spikes platform was not functioning today, perhaps having been broken for months or even years. All the switches would need to be tested tomorrow.

The human’s soul had settled above the body, flickering with a soft green light. Chara sighed. One more. One more attempt before they’d return to a previous time, take the soul home, and come up with a new strategy. Chara wrapped their arms under the corpse, and with a heave, began to lift it from where it had settled.

The body was nearly clear of the spikes when they heard the soft crunch of movement on the stone floor just above. Chara released the perforated human and jumped back, looking up. It was quiet now, but lavender dust swirled around the broken edge of the hole in the ceiling. Recently disturbed.

It was probably nothing.

Chara scrambled up the ladder to the upper floor, biting back thrumming panic. 

If it was something, it will be fine.

After all, Chara had created a return point after the child had fallen, and they had even scanned the area to ensure no one had seen. If someone had just arrived now, Chara could always go back and prevent the witness from arriving on the scene. It didn’t matter if it was a monster or even Asriel.

They reached the last rung of the ladder, pulling themself onto the main floor. It was going to be fine. Chara had accounted for everything.

Everything except for the trembling creature curled up against the wall, only a few feet from the hole. 

Another human. Two in one day. The caretaker could hardly believe their eyes. 

Like the last one, it was a female adolescent, perhaps even around the same age. Thankfully, not as tall. Clad predominantly in black, its straight brunette locks were bleached with two ridiculous horizontal stripes of blonde at the bottom. Chara might have described the style as punk or goth, if not for the cowboy boots and hat disrupting the look. It seemed that embarrassing alternative fashion persisted with every generation.

Even so, there was something familiar about its wide-eyed stare and knitted brows. The child staggered to its feet, hat swinging against its backpack by a drawstring around its neck. The child’s fingers clung to the wall as if its legs could give way at any moment. Its body was partially turned away as if to run, but between Chara and the gaping hole in the cracked floor, there was nowhere to go. After a moment, a small voice choked out, "What have you... What have you…?"

Chara did not have the patience or the interest to hear the rest. They swept their arm in a grand gesture before giving a small bow, “Greetings. I am the caretaker of these ruins. My name is…” As they leaned forward, Chara caught sight of the expanse of blood on their tunic. In all the excitement, they had somehow forgotten; the jig was up before it had even begun.

“Ah. Well then...” Chara gave a half shrug, “I suppose we can skip introductions.” 

Chara withdrew their knife with a flourish and descended on the child. While not as simple, stabbing would prove a cleaner alternative to the spike pit. Instead of flinching away, the child squared its shoulders and reached for the holster slung around its waist. It withdrew a revolver. 

There was no warning shot. The child screamed with primal rage, firing only a few feet from their target.

No chance to avoid it. The bullet shot through Chara’s forehead and crashed out the back of their cranium. Little was left of it.

***

Chara grabbed their face, patted it down. It was all there. They were standing in front of the cracked floor puzzle, the green soul and the impaled corpse resting below. Robe clean. They had gone back. 

How could this have happened? If not for their power, everything Chara had worked towards could have been lost thanks to one brat. What kind of child carried a firearm? How could they combat such a thing? They had not seen a weapon like that since... 

No. This was not the time for reminiscing. Where was the human now? It could not have witnessed the fate of the last victim, for it surely would have tried to intervene. That would put the gunslinger a few rooms away at least. 

There was still time to fix things. Unsheathing their knife, Chara took a deep breath and marched towards fate. 

Working their way deeper into the ruins, Chara crept through each empty room until they found themselves at the end: the large sanctuary where all humans came crashing into the Underground. There Chara found their latest guest, back pressed against a pillar and gun in hand. The teenager gasped at the sight of the caretaker’s silhouette through the stone arch. Its eyes, swimming with confusion and fear, narrowed into deep hatred. 

There it was again. Where had they seen that look before?

The human raised its weapon towards the caretaker once more. Chara clenched their fists. Indignant. Wide-eyed. Smiling. In the tense silence, Chara spoke. "What's this? Are you surprised to see me?" 

"The devil never went down easily."

Chara chose to ignore this.

"I see that humans haven't changed," chided Chara, gesturing towards the gun. Disgust held captive their visage. "My father was obsessed with the vulgar things." 

Chara continued forward, reminding themself they had faced plenty of dangerous situations before. Staring down the barrel of a gun was new, but nothing to be afraid of. It didn't stop their palms from sweating. 

The brazen child scoffed. "Sounds like your dad had the right idea."

Chara remained unimpressed. "You are a criminal," they said. "A murderer. Vermin."

"Criminal...?" the child repeated, voice rasping. Stepping forward, it shook its head: "No. I'm justice!"

The teen shot twice. The first bullet pierced Chara's throat, and the second, their brain.

***

Chara grasped their neck, stumbling back from the edge of the cracked floor. It was worse that time. The pain was now only a memory, but it rang through their mind like a high pitched squeal following a deafening sound. This time, the intruder would be the one to bleed.

Chara rushed towards the back of the ruins to meet their prey. As they rounded a corner, a bullet cracked the stone wall inches away from their head. They pulled back to stay behind cover, glimpsing the teenager before it fired the second shot.

“W-W-We—” Chara cut themself short, disgusted by the shaking in their voice. They could hear the muffled steps of its boots approaching their hiding place. Chara tried to swallow, but their throat was dry, “We can do this all day if you want to.”

“I’ll kill you as many times as it takes.”

“That seems a little excessive,” Chara held their knife in front of them, angling it to try and see the human in the blade’s reflection. It didn’t work. “I haven’t even done anything to you.”

“You—!” the child’s voice cracked, raising to a shriek, “You killed my friend!”

Realization washed over Chara. “So you’re the friend,” they leaned over, picking up some dead leaves scattered at their feet, “If I remember correctly, your friend said it wanted to spend more time here. I did it a favor.”

“Shut up! Don’t you dare talk about—”

Chara tossed the leaves out of cover, and the child fired through them, its finger wrapped tight around the trigger. Taking advantage of the gap between shots, Chara leapt towards the human, knife raised high.

They had miscalculated. 

The child was a few paces out of reach. The gunslinger adjusted, firing three more times in rapid succession. Two shots missed, but one tore through Chara’s elbow. Chara collapsed, the knife skittering out of their hand as they grasped the joint with their other arm. Pain ripped through their body, their scream drowning out the click-click-click of the shooter’s empty gun. 

Right, the screaming. How undignified. Chara stifled their voice, struggling to raise their head to their assailant. The child had backed away, searching the room for something to replace the now useless gun. Its eyes settled on Chara’s knife.

Chara wouldn’t give it the satisfaction. They gripped their ruined arm and pooled their willpower. They needed...

***

Another fresh start. Chara grabbed their knife and stormed into the ruins ablaze with fury. The child may have firepower, but they were immortal. 

Immortal but not invulnerable. Chara slowed and looked down at their renewed arm. There had to be another way to do this.

A plan began to formulate in their head.

Chara sheathed their weapon and continued, cautiously checking each corner. “Child, enough of this! I would like to call a truce.” Chara called out, their voice echoing. No response. They continued forward, calling out again, “I have a proposal that will benefit us both.”

Chara felt a bullet fire past their head, the gunshot reverberating throughout the chamber. Chara flinched but caught a glimpse of the gunslinger hiding themselves behind the doorway of the next room. They fought the urge to chase them, and instead smoothed their robe and ran a hand through their hair. There were broken strands where the bullet had passed by.

“Do you not tire of this game, human? Surrender and I will reunite you with your friend.”

“I don’t make deals with the devil,” the child scoffed from behind cover.

Chara chuckled, “You would throw away this chance for such a trifling matter?”

“You killed her.”

“And you killed me. Yet I still live.”

The human stepped into the open, lining up Chara’s skull with the revolver barrel. Its eyes flashed with a familiar menace.

“Wait,” Chara said, raising their hands, “You have witnessed my power. You would be a fool not to use it to your advantage. Killing me means losing your chance to be with them again.”

The child’s gun began to lower before it snapped back on target. “I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to execute you.”

The human’s grip tightened around the trigger and Chara threw themself to the side as the shot grazed their arm. Chara stumbled, backing around the doorway for cover just as another shot chipped the wall. They grabbed their arm where the skin had been broken. Nothing serious.

“Have it your way then!” Chara shouted back, “I will let your friend know you chose to abandon them.” Chara broke out in a sprint, towards where they had left the body.

“What? Wait! Come back!” The gunslinger made chase, boots pounding against the stone floor, “Don’t touch her!” 

The human chased Chara down a hallway and raised the gun, firing two more times. Both missed. Chara disappeared around another corner of the labyrinth and the shooter barreled forward in hot pursuit.

The child entered the next room revolver first and Chara, waiting in ambush, slashed their knife across its raised hand. The child screamed, the gun dropping from their hand along with two severed fingers. Blood gushed from the wound and the disarmed creature fell to the floor shrieking.

Chara stood dumbfounded. They looked from the dismembered fingers to the bloodied edge of their blade, then started to laugh. “Would you look at that,” they crooned, “This thing is rather sharp, is it not?”

Doubled over, its bleeding hand pressed against its belly, the human was reaching for the dropped gun with its intact hand. Chara collected it before the shooter could reclaim it. The revolver was well taken care of. Other than the fresh blood, it was sparkling clean with a pearl inlay in the handle. The kind of gun Chara could imagine hung above the mantle of a dead-end suburban home.

“If I have been counting correctly,” Chara placed a finger on the trigger, “There is one bullet remaining.” They leveled the barrel with the child’s head. Tears ran down its face as it glowered up at Chara.

“You said—” it choked, “You said you could reunite us. Was it true?”

Chara smiled, “Yes. You will be together forever.”

***

After picking a spot in the room that was clear of any blood, Chara shook the contents of their victim’s backpack to the floor. A lightweight jacket, compass, some sort of flashlight, rope, miscellaneous makeup, and two rectangular bottles of soda made from a paper-like material. There was a small flat metal square that looked like a compact mirror, but when Chara tried to open it, the current time and words requesting credentials showed up on the top. Some sort of watch or communication device? Chara placed it in the discard pile. 

They opened up a black wallet with a spiderweb design on the front, where some loose cash and a couple punch cards fell out. Punch cards in this day and age? Ridiculous. Tucked in the back was a physical ID, with the name of a high school printed on it and the year 2076. The thumbnail-sized picture showed the human with an awkward grin and blue marbled background, its hair not quite as atrocious as it was currently. Chara stilled.

The child’s family name—it was their last name. 

Chara dropped the wallet, taking the card with both hands, and read the word over and over. What was it that the apron-wearing human had said? That there was a familiarity—a resemblance—between Chara and its friend?

“Coincidence,” Chara murmured, flicking the ID into the discard pile. They paused to glance at the two soul containers they had brought with them. They sat side by side, a green soul in one, yellow in the other.

“Or maybe... it's destiny.”

interlude: justice // end

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[peachfluffsoftstuff]

Beyond The Reef [1]

Content: Soft Vore, G/T Vore, Unwilling Prey, Shark Mer Pred, Eventual Safe Vore Reveal

Word Count: 2230

Fandom: N/A; Original Content

A/N: An older piece, but I’m still fond of it!! I have a few more chapters already written, too. I promise it gets fluffier.

-

Aless pressed himself flat against the rockbed, listening as the reef went quiet around him at the sight of two predators passing through. Neither of them seemed to notice, probably used to the attention, and were talking in low voices that still clearly travelled to all the smaller folk in the area, him included. 

He watched in half-stunned awe as the giant mers passed his hiding spot, neither noticing his tiny body camouflaged against the plant life. What a chance encounter… He was suddenly glad he had decided to venture out alone again today, watching them glide along with an unassuming steadiness to their pace. 

They continued their discussion as they moved, and despite, or maybe because of the danger, Aless darted after them, eavesdropping as he swam through concealing nooks and crannies. 

The one currently talking was seemingly younger, with wild dark hair flowing around a face with bright eyes. He had olive skin with dark grey scales scattered in patches around his fins. His tail was a lighter blue-gray, tipped with black, marking him as a reef shark breed of mer. Unlike stories Aless had heard, there was no constant anger in his eyes, but rather, crinkles around the corners that looked an awful lot like smile lines. 

At the moment however, he wore an expression of tentative concern as he frowned at his companion. 

“...I don't know Dev, doesn't it seem kind of harsh? Maybe there's some other way to find one, no need to-”

“Skim,” the other mer cut him off, and Aless wondered at that too. The older and, apparently, leader of the two had similar dark hair, though much tamer, and his tail was the deep mottled grey of a tiger shark. “I understand your concern, but this is the way it's been done for ages. There’s no need to make waves, it’ll work out alright. It always does. You’ll understand when it happens. Trust me.” He offered the smaller a slight smile.

The other mer-- Skim, allegedly-- seemed to droop slightly as he sighed, returning a weak smile and seemingly finally resigned to whatever it was they were talking about. Aless tilted his head, wondering for only a moment or two, before becoming distracted by the familiar surroundings. This… was the route to Hali Reef that the two were taking. 

Aless knew because he had just come from that very direction, hoping to avoid more harassment from the other teens his age. Nevi, at least, didn't try to draw attention to him, but it could only do so much when one’s been the whole village’s scapegoat for so long. 

What would two giant mers be doing in such a small mountain reef? Aless moved faster, an uneasy pit in his stomach, old folk tales suddenly springing to mind. These were still predators, after all.  

Soon, they came upon the opening into the underwater village, which looked uncomfortably recently abandoned. Aless could tell they hadn’t had much time to lock down and hide, and felt a little guilty for not immediately swimming ahead to warn them. 

Though, if the giant mers hadn’t come through and he’d raised a false alarm... Well, he caught enough flack from the townsfolk already without ‘attention seeker’ being added to the list. 

There was a tense pause, before Dev cleared his throat pointedly, much to Skim’s dismay. 

“You mean I really have to--?” Dev gave him a quelling look, and he sighed uncomfortably again but turned to the nearest patch of seagrass and reached out with one hand, slowly picking through it. Aless’s sense of horror mounted as he spotted a flash of silver amidst the waving plants. The only one in the village with those distinct glinting silver scales… was Nevi. 

Skim seemed to have spotted it as well, going by the way he was indecisively hovering his hand closer. Aless watched, his whole body tense with anxiety. In an instant, he saw as Nevi’s self-restraint broke, and she darted out of the plants and away like quicksilver. 

Unfortunately, Skim was even faster, slamming his hands together over her so quickly it seemed like it had been only his reflexes that caught her. He seemed to feel the same way as he looked between the prison his cupped hands had made and the other giant mer, who was looking expectantly at him. 

Hesitantly, he closed his hands together and used the position as leverage to hold the girl by pinching two fingers securely around Nevi’s muscled waist. She looked small compared to him, barely the size of his hand. 

“Why isn’t anyone helping her,” Aless murmured to himself, though deep down he already knew. She was the strongest and second-fastest one in the entire village. If she couldn’t get free, nobody could save her. 

Not without risking life and limb, with no chance of success. Aless reached for the carved dagger tied at his hip. 

Nevi was thrashing in Skim’s hold, gills and frills flaring, lashing out with enough force to break something vital in a mer her size, but only making Skim take on an expression like a kicked guppy. He started to lift her closer to his face, and a dismayed note of alarm wailed in Aless’s mind. He was moving before he could even think twice, shooting across the open water as quickly as his fins would propel him. 

He used his momentum to drive his small dagger into Skim's finger, hard enough to stick. Skim yelped at the unexpected pain and pulled his injured hand back to his chest, releasing Nevi. In the same motion, like clockwork, Aless was dragged along, the drag causing him to collide with the back of the hand he’d attacked. 

Before he could reorient himself, Skim’s other hand weighed down on him, leaving him sandwiched between the two, just as trapped as Nevi had been. 

“Aless!”

Unable to do anything about his position, he floundered for a moment, before managing to meet Nevi’s eyes. She had twisted to look at his predicament, caught in indecision, but there were two predators there and only one’s hands were occupied with him. 

“Go!” He shouted, harsh enough a command that she jerked and darted away, still stuck in the fight or flight mindset. It was a good thing he was probably about to die because otherwise she would have kicked his ass later for yelling at her like that.

He got only a moment to watch her vanish back into the reef in a flash of silver before the warm skin around him moved, one hand moving down to grasp his tail between finger and thumb. As soon as his bottom half was securely snagged, he was pulled back to look at his captor. His orientation shifted as the hold tugged him from the bottom end, leaving him hanging upside down. 

Despite the instinctual panic edging his mind, he didn't try to escape, common sense dismissing it as a fruitless effort. If nobody was brave enough to try and free Nevi, everyone’s darling, from Skim’s grip, then there was no way Aless, the local bastard, would be getting any semblance of help at all. Seeing as Nevi’s considerable strength hadn’t done anything for her, he wouldn't be able to make a getaway on his own, either. 

Still, he refused to cower or beg, glaring at Skim as he was dangled upside down in front of him. The mer was nursing his injured thumb, pulling the tooth dagger out of his skin with his teeth and spitting it into the open water. Aless watched somewhat mournfully as it sank down to the ocean floor below. That had taken him ages to find and fix up into a proper weapon. 

“At least it’s not deep...” 

Looking back up, Aless automatically flailed as he was dragged by the tail to in front of the giant’s face, and he stared at the big features, resisting the urge to reach out and touch the tip of that lightly freckled nose. It was close enough that Skim went cross eyed trying to keep looking at him, defeating the whole purpose of closer scrutiny. Aless stubbornly crossed his arms to keep from pinwheeling them, ignoring the way his fluttering gills and fins gave away his fear despite his best efforts. 

He expected Skim to pull back and send a desperate look to Dev yet again, but instead his expression was strangely dazed, his glowing irises near eclipsed by expanding pupils, gaze fixed on Aless with a strange intensity that sent a chill down his spine. He absently chewed on his bottom lip with sharp-looking teeth, and then slowly lifted Aless up above his head, looking up to keep him in view. 

Aless was only kept in the dark about his intentions for a second or two, before Skim made them very clear by opening his mouth, displaying rows of triangular white teeth framing a fleshy gullet.

“Ah,” Aless said, softly. 

At least Nevi wasn't in his place. At least they’d all know what happened to him. At least nobody would miss him too much. His chest jolted up in hiccups as his breathing started to speed up unsteadily. 

As if in spite of its inevitable end, his heartbeat was pounding a frighteningly quick tempo as he was lowered into the gaping maw, the prehensile tongue stretching out to receive him. He numbly watched as his head passed under the stacked rows of teeth, aligned neatly to tear prey apart. The rough muscle at his back was the only thing cushioning him from being skewered on the lower teeth. 

Abruptly, his surroundings went dark, Skim’s lips sealed around his torso cutting out all the outside light. His hands rose to push against the hard palate above him automatically, as if he could somehow keep the mouth from closing further. He felt the pressure from the fingers holding his tail vanish, apparently satisfied with his current level of immobility. He didn't try to move, too aware of the fangs barely scraping his stomach like a threat. 

The seconds stretched, and Aless was certain that any moment, the jaws would snap shut on his spine, interlocking and slicing him clean in half. The blood would be a mess. Distantly, he hoped that none of the children in the reef were watching. 

His grim predictions were interrupted by a pulling sensation on his skin, and he yelped as more of him was suddenly suctioned into the dark, enclosed space. More than ever, Aless could feel the difference between the warm, cloying atmosphere in the giant mouth and the cool ocean water brushing past his tail fin, which was still peeking out between Skim’s lips, twitching weakly. 

The top of his head gently bumped into something solid, and when he reached out with one hand to investigate, the smooth flesh of the throat rippled under his touch. He jerked away, seized by a primal urge to get out get out get out get out-- but at his squirming, the tongue beneath him rose up and pinned him against the ridged roof of the mouth, knocking the wind out of him. 

He was stunned for a moment, splayed out with his arms flung above his head. Then, there was another pull, an uncanny tug on his whole body accompanied by a thick sound, and his arms were suddenly surrounded on all sides by the same smooth, slippery muscle. He drew in breath to yell, terrified, and with the sound of another heavy swallow, found his entire head and chest stuck in the same constricting tube. Even as he tried to wriggle free, he could feel the rough tongue on the scales of his tail, tasting him, and he shuddered, squirming as the esophagus contracted and pulled in more of him. 

He only had a moment to think ‘I can't breathe’ before the final thick swallow resounded in his ears, peristalsis locking him in place and tugging him downwards. His smooth fish half went down easier, one gulp enough to tug the whole thing down, fins and all. Locked completely in the slick tube with barely enough room to twitch, Aless focused on trying to bring in oxygen from the meager water trapped with him. Everything pulsed around him, loud and overwhelming.

Just as the edges of his vision began to darken, his hands were released from the complete peristalsis, and the rest of him soon followed, sliding into a slick pouch full of warm seawater, contracting and relaxing rhythmically at his arrival. It was larger than where he’d been before, but filled quickly, his tail coiling and twisting in the meager space.   

After gasping in enough air to function, Aless looked around at the pitch dark space with growing despair, and began to run his hands along the stomach walls, desperately searching for some kind of exit. He found only smooth flesh under his fingers, and a rumbling purr started up above him, making him yank his hands away angrily. That giant bastard was enjoying this. 

As quickly as his temper had flared up, it died away, and he slumped against the soft folds of flesh around him. Of course Skim was enjoying this. In every way, he’d acted as the predator that shark mers were rumored to be. 

Aless was nothing more than a meal now, tucked out of sight and out of mind.

[ziracona]

What do you think of the new Arcus lore entries that basically say that survivors have their memory wiped every time they die? It undoes so much of the established canon and just makes all the survivors total strangers to each other :/

It’s very stupid and I had a fit when I saw it lol. A couple people here already heard me rant about it. The Devs have made a lot of terrible choices. Retconned their own lore repeatedly and made it worse, without even bothering to delete the OG character breakdowns so now you just read both and go??? Like didn’t even cover their mistakes bare minimum effort here. But out of all of it, this is by far the worst. I refuse to aknowledge it because it essentially sucks the entire game of any storytelling value it could ever have. It’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever read.

First of all, it again contradicts long and established and /still current/ both game mechanics and lore. Characters learn perks, evolve, learn skills and collect scavenged rewards, and teach their skills to each other. It’s literally impossible to improve a skill without gaining knowledge and practice, so the lore not only negates any value to the world and story, it negates the mechanics of the game itself. It’s also just stupid from a pure world standpoint. The Entity feeds off emotion. How are survivors supposed to ever escape or even know to hope for escape? How are they supposed to know how to do gens and find gates? The Entity would get a consistent cycle of 20 seconds of fear and confusion, then death. Humans haven’t been murdered. They will panic and go into shock cut down by a chainsaw. You have to learn to adjust to pain and fear as much as you can to even give the Entity a game. What the fuck happened to the Entity’s whole, “they strive to make it to the exits and back to the temporary safety of the campfire, even knowing they’ll be thrown in again”? Or the slow loss of hope as they realize how trapped they are? How tf you lose hope when you don’t even know you’ve done it before!!?

The levels of bullshit are mind boggling. It’s maybe the worst writing choice I have quite literally ever seen. It contradicts everything! There are Benedict Baker entries up describing his experiences dying and coming back!!! We HAVE IT IN WRITING. Not that that’s stopped the shithead dumbasses before. I’m just. What happened to last month’s tome, where it was stated a guy recognized a trial realm he’d just been in and thought he was hallucinating and screamed until his own team drowned him in mud????? LAST. FUCKING. MONTH.

It negates any storytelling or even emotional investment the game could possibly have. If they rarely even get more than a days worth of memories, they can never change or grow or know each other, or improve as humans. Learn things, escape. There’s just. No point suddenly. To the characters and their plight at all. They’re just automatons effectively.

What happened to devs saying they could fall in love? Lol catch me meeting my true love in the suffocation pit for the seven minutes I know who they are. It’s the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever read. The Entity has no reason to do that! It has been stated for years that it feeds off the bonds survivors form, that it likes to let them grow so they last longer, that it gets off high and long emotion. There’s no payoff to two seconds of shock and fear while you think Michael Myers is killing you for the first time. It’s nothing compared to the sweet 9 course meal of going in against a killer you’ve hated for two years after the gate is open to try to save your best friend from a hook. It’s just. It’s stupid and illogical from any possible viewing point and I’m going to kill the Devs myself.

I think literally the only choice any of us have is to either agree the only canon tome was and always will be Just Claudette and call it a day, or assume the Overseer meant the survivors lose the memory of what death itself feels like, which is still bullshit and stupid as fuck (dude. Ask yourself. Do you fear death? Or the pain of it. For almost all of us, it’s the fucking pain. If you remembered what it’s like to get sawed in half I’m damn sure you’d be motivated not to let it happen and sacred to see it coming again. Sure, you adjust to things, but you can’t adjust to some things. And kids don’t fear a hot stove till they’ve been burned. The knowledge is fear and letting them have it just makes sense but the devs can have their 12% bullshit if they back the fuck off everything else) but is a lot better than taking it as it reads.

[parasympathic]

SELF PARA 002.

[ isa 💕 → monty ] sel’s already here but you’re welcome to join us...? 😁 

It was, objectively speaking, a terrible idea. For a number of reasons that came quickly and didn’t require any great amount of overthinking on Montgomery’s part this time. If it were only Isabel, there wouldn’t be a question, a promised bottle of Patron that he’d offered to bring to her tonight, a long overdue escape that he thought they both might need. Drinking with Selwyn, however, carried a number of complications, even if it was solely for her status within the Magistrate. A string he’d already pulled on a few times, bullets dodged thanks to sympathies she pretended she didn’t have. Which still didn’t make it wise to let go of his firmly held self control, not in front of a telepath or a friend, when there was an expansive list of secrets he carried, both damning and personal. 

There was one reason stacked against it, a side effect of the forced distance between himself and Emil. One he hadn’t anticipated, because it had never been a problem before, not really. He might have had a strained relationship with sleep, a tendency to overthink that kept him up until strange hours of the morning, but he’d learned to function on the bare minimum. It was time alone that was disappointing, sure, but it wasn’t an overwhelming kind, at least it wouldn’t have been before. 

Before the Institute. Before cuffs around his wrist and white walls around him, memories that crept into his thoughts when he was staring up at the ceiling in an empty bed, finding himself stretching his mind out to move the bed, or a book, or anything so long as he could assure some irrational part of his mind that there wouldn’t be a blue flare across the ceiling the second he did. Memories that found those cracks in his unconscious mind, a few confusing moments when he first awoke that he couldn’t remember where he was. A brief second of panic, of his heart pounding as he tried to blink the grit from his eyes and focus on his bedroom. Bed empty, but his, scars on his wrists, but no cuffs.

It was a reassurance that got him through the day, but hadn’t helped the last three nights, and it left him staring at his phone for a moment before he replied.

[ monty → isa 💕 ] be there in twenty, chérie. 

The game was never have I ever, and after the first three shots Montgomery decided it had been chosen with the specific purpose of fucking with him. Enough sins already shared between the two women sitting around the table with him that he suspected most of what they said was either an inside joke, or in Selwyn’s case, a chance to figure out just how much Monty had changed. Because she’d recognized a shift in him as much as he had in her, pinpointing it the first time he’d seen her at the Pit, just by the way he smiled. Even if she didn’t know why he hadn’t before, even if she didn’t know why it hurt to hear himself called a robot. And maybe it was because she’d paid more attention, because Dom had looked up to him, but not at him, and Dev might’ve forced her hobbies on him, but she’d found him boring.

“Never have I ever been arrested.” Isabel’s offering, accompanied by a muted grin in his direction. His response an easy roll of his eyes before he tossed the shot back, aware that there were three empty glasses hitting the table afterwards.

“Why Dr. Monty, I’m shocked.” Selwyn, putting a hand to her chest and looking at him with mock surprise. “Scandalized even.”

“Are you though?” Brow raised in a challenge before he nodded his head to the dark haired woman on his left. “We have the same friend.” A point proven solely by the ease of his posture, back against the chair and Isabel’s feet crossed and resting in his lap. Palm curved around her shin with easy affection he didn’t give most.

Something just as endearing in the way she cursed him afterwards. “Hijo de puta I did that for you.”

“Oh, I know, that’s why it’s funny.” A grin flashed at her that dissolved into a laugh as she kicked at his knee, and a memory of a holding cell that shouldn’t have left him with so much warm fondness sitting on his chest.

It didn’t surprise him when the game started devolving into questions of love and sex and heartbreak, and he lost track of how many he tossed back alongside them. Ignoring that three months ago he wouldn’t have been able to drink to half of them, heartsick before, but never heartbroken, a list of lovers but never in love. Somewhere along the line it drowned out some of his fear, leaving a secret out on the table among empty shot glasses. One he’d kept so long he thought it had become part of him, but there was something liberating about leaving it on the cutting room floor.

"It makes sense,” said Sel. A response that had Monty lifting a brow, a tone far too innocent as she toyed with a shot glass. “No wonder you were so oblivious to my charms.”

It made him laugh, something too relieved in the sound, head resting against the back of the chair. “Obviously. The only reason.” Because some secrets were easier to let go of than others, and he found this one didn’t hurt as much as he’d feared.

He was still grateful when they broke for food, a chance to let the tequila settle, Isa complaining about the poor quality of her weed before she remembered why, and he blamed both the liquor and the smoke hanging thick in the air instead of her for the bluntness that followed. “Tell your boyfriend to stop avoiding me.” 

“We’re too old to pass notes, chérie.” Said as gently as he could, not wanting to sit in the middle even while feeling as though it was a space he firmly occupied.

“Dile a ese cabrón, stop being a little bitch.” A curse accompanied by a gesture of the lighter, and he knew he was drunk because he found himself biting back a laugh, even while fully aware it wasn’t funny. That his trust wasn’t the only one left shattered, too many messages in her phone that Monty hadn’t written, and if there was the faint prick of guilt that he might’ve helped ruin something between them, he couldn’t remember how to lie to her, or if he even wanted to.

It left him with a quiet longing, missing the man abruptly when he’d managed to keep himself distracted most of the night. Not for any comfort he wanted to steal, but for the absence of him, the certainty that Emil would fit easily into place around the table with them. A familiar fantasy of their lives intertwining, and after a moment he pulled himself to his feet and reached for his phone.

Monty didn’t regret the decision to call Emil, not while he was on the phone with him. It wasn’t until after, sitting there on Isabel’s fire escape with nothing but the quiet sound of voices and laughter behind him and the distant hum of a car in the distance that it finally set in. Trying to replay a conversation where already the details were slipping away, and he was just left with a growing unease and the ache in his chest, a quiet voice swearing that he’d somehow fucked up. Sinking guilt following when he thought it was for the conversation itself, Emil miles away and trying to balance his life and his family. He didn’t need Montgomery falling apart.

He was slow to untangle himself from his place on the metal grate, vertigo hitting him hard and leaving him with a hand pressing against the side of her building to keep himself steady. A brief laugh following, an instinctive reaction that lacked real humor, and then he was trying to navigate his way back through the window.

It went worse this time, one leg getting caught on the edge, body tilting to compensate for it, and ending with Monty on his back staring up at Isabel’s ceiling with one foot still sticking out into the cold air. He heard laughter somewhere behind him but he didn’t look back, a distant awareness of burning in his eyes and the sensation of something stuck in his throat. Making it harder to breathe, to talk, to think, and he couldn’t tell if it was regret or despair.

Only that it hit in waves, his own voice in his head, am I different?

Do you want to be the same?

The answers slipping in easier now, one after another, when he wasn’t trying to hold onto something more fragile through the thin connection of a phone call. I just don’t want to be weaker. I don’t want to be ruined. I don’t want to feel that powerless ever again. I don’t want nightmares and I don’t want fear and I don’t want to wake up and not remember where I am. I don’t want to wonder if everything good about myself already got destroyed years ago and if Hugo just finished the job.

I want to know who I am.

Monty’s palms pressed against his eyes, self restraint doing a poor job of holding himself together when there was so much tequila stripping it away, so he tried to cling to it with the pressure of his hands and desperate, steadying breaths that got cut off again when it just left room for something worse to slip through. Every memory he’d tried to put aside, to strip whatever useful information he could before discarding them, a month of his life that still clung to him like smoke. A logical dissection of events and an illogical shaking of his frame, trying to hold in the wretched sob that wanted to rip from his chest, because what good is that? 

“Monty?” Isabel’s voice breaking through first before he felt fingers in his hair, a soothing comfort that he flinched away from before settling under her touch. “Hey. What happened? What did he say to you?” 

“No, no, he didn’t do anything wrong.” Words that came quickly and thoughtlessly, escaping somewhere between ragged breaths to stall any anger before it came. Even if it felt like a blatant lie after it was past his lips, because Emil had left one of the deepest scars, that feeling of betrayal, of trust shattering, one he hadn’t given blindly, but with too much hope. And the man had burned it all down, maybe destroyed them both, and it left Monty with too much hurt pressing down on his chest, a brutal crushing ache in both heart and his lungs that wasn’t just for himself, his prison stark and white, Emil’s looking like a rotting mockery of his own bedroom. 

He didn’t know if he could forgive, but he’d wanted to forget, and found it still all too close the second he stopped packing those wounds with something golden and kinder. Reaching out his hand to grasp at her arm, the other dragging across his face again, trying to ignore the warm wetness slipping down his cheeks, a memory of sitting on his couch trying to stem the same flood. “Can you just... hug me?” 

There was no hesitation, just Isabel shifting behind him, pulling his head into her lap and arms curving around his shoulders. A comfort that made the shaking of his frame worse before it got better, fingers tight around her arm and wishing he could explain to either of them why he was crying. But if Emil had told him to talk about it, he couldn’t find the words, just the distant awareness of a wound that hadn’t healed and her voice, telling him “I’m here.” 

His awareness of Selwyn was just as removed, barely aware of her settling down on the carpet next to him. None of the same easy affections given, but after a moment her hand settled on his shoulder, her voice “do you want to see more of memories of you?” and no real chance given to answer before the world faded away.

Isabel’s living room was made black, soft and encompassing, like dreamless sleep, a darkness that Montgomery felt himself sinking into. Warmer for the comforting contrast to stark white, muscles untensing and going liquid as he stretched out onto the carpet. Wondering if he didn’t fall asleep in the brief moment before nothingness and the sudden emergence of memories, cast in bright technicolor even if his own were black and white. An intense projection of thought, of someone else’s life, none of the images belonging to him, and he didn’t know if it was comforting to see it all again, but he thought it was meant to be.

Because there was a version of himself in Selwyn’s memory, the version she saw, of someone calm and composed even as a child. Always the babysitter when he was older than the rest, always the one taping up wounds and skinned knees, and there was a flicker of his own memory in the back of his head, putting them on his own scrapes and scars too, but alone in the bathroom. A version of himself he’d thought was so dissonant from who he was now, but there was too much familiar, beyond the simple physicality of the boy in her memory. The starkest difference in the eyes, because they looked impossibly vacant, and part of him wondered distantly how she hadn’t seen it, how no one had seen it, why no one could hear him silently screaming when he’d still been young and new. It was a feeling that was all too familiar, like it had echoed through the years until history repeated itself, taking new form; how did no one notice I was gone?

The tug on curled locks distracted him, tipping his head back to see a smile so much brighter on Isabel’s lips as she watched the images around them, invited in by the woman who controlled them. “Look how young you were. Look at your hair,” she said. A different echo this time, like family, like a mother sharing stories about her only son, the warm smell of coffee and old books. And those were present too, an image of a lanky, teenage version of himself, still curled in a chair with a book in his lap before he was interrupted. He closed his eyes briefly to hold onto it, to hold onto Isabel, letting the world shift on its axis beneath his spine, the kind of vertigo that made him wonder if he wasn’t in danger of spilling off the earth altogether. A distant, nostalgic ache that always came with missing a home that he’d never had. 

And he knew when it faded, light pressing against his eyelids before she was prodding him gently. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He stayed quiet for a moment, blinking away the darkness and left staring up at the ceiling that was too bright in comparison, but he reached out, floating the bottle of tequila off the table. Thoughtless and casual and his, no flicker of blue, no yawning emptiness greeting him in place of his gift. He wasn’t trapped, not in a cell, not in his own home, not by anything but chains of his own making, and if he’d changed, if he was different, it wasn’t the first time. A painful echo of empty eyes looking back at him, and he finally nodded his head. Tilting it back to look up at her, a grateful squeeze of her arm. 

“No,” he said. “But I feel a little better.” Sitting up slowly, hand reaching out for the bottle as it drifted into his grasp, a swig straight from it before he turned and passed it to Selwyn like quieter gratitude. Letting the taste of something sharp and sweet ease the dull and distant ache in his chest when he couldn’t quite name its form. If it was for what he’d lost or never had, if it was for who he’d never become and who he wished he was, for a moment all he had was another memory, her voice somewhere in the back of his head, and he didn’t know if it held hope or just another hurt. Although, who knew you would change so much, after all these years, making jokes and all. No longer quite the robot.

Despite his assurances, Monty didn’t feel better, not right away. Tequila that was compromising his faculties, but kept him hovering on that line between bleak despair and a reckless, boundless happiness that he’d wanted to hold onto. A quieter thought that he’d wanted to share that with Emil more than anything, a version of himself that didn’t carry cuffs around his wrists or the scars from it, but he’d warned the man about delusion and he should’ve known better. There was more comfort from simply passing the bottle around like he was back in college again, the first time he hadn’t felt like an outsider staring in from behind two way glass. 

“I want ice cream.” Decided abruptly, unsure if it was true until he was saying it.

And that was how Montgomery Lacroix ended up in the Circle K sometime after midnight, a mess of snacks and ice cream scattered across the counter, and Sel plopping down a slushie next to it. “It’s not a Slurpee,” she said. “But it’ll do.” 

This time the nostalgia made him laugh, something easy and simple from his childhood that didn’t demand anything more complex, a joy so small it hadn’t been worth stripping away from him, and he nodded his head at her once it settled into an easy grin. “Get me one too, yeah? The blue flavor.” Turning afterward to the poor kid working behind the counter, a little wide eyed as he stared at the three of them. Finding himself unconcerned for now about whatever rumors spread tomorrow, the kind of thing he’d always avoided and always feared, never letting anyone see a single crack in the man he’d made himself into. 

Ones that might all be on display, but there was something just as liberating in how little he cared, even if it was courage fueled by tequila. “Can I get... stop...” the words broken up by a short laugh and Isabel tucking sunglasses into place over his ears, grinning at her reflection in the red and orange lenses. “A pack of Camels,” he tried gain. “And these too, apparently.” Gesturing vaguely at his face, and if his eyes were hidden he decided it was enough for tonight just to know they were no longer empty and vacant.

[mudlark2019]

Around the fire pit, telling stories, Night 2

I feel I should explain what passes for “rules” in this exercise.  First, you don’t have to respond right away -- there is no guilt or deadline associated with this, it’s entirely for fun.  I for one am always fascinated by the creative processes of writers I admire, and I would love to hear whatever you would all happily and easily share.  There is no homework to be found here, folks!  If you’d rather not reply at all, please just sit back and enjoy some well-deserved praise :-D

Today I want to ask our lovely and amazing friend @imaginationtherapy to share more about how she wrote “Rusty Cage” which I would say has been my favorite story of hers, which is of course a bit like picking a favorite flower in a garden.  Like @astridcontramundum I also want to hear more about the chapter where Jakes kills the doppelgänger Dev, which blew me away when I first read it, and reading it again for this I was still like “omfg Jakes” and then especially the following paragraphs where they realize the fallout of his actions.  Two questions to focus on as we go: 1) do you have a philosophy for how you write action sequences?  2) did you know as you wrote this that we would all be sitting on the edge of our seats?  I mean, could you FEEL the tension as a writer as you wrote it?  

Excerpt under the cut if I’m doing this correctly...

If anyone would like to join in, feel free to add more friends!  @drusilla-951 @dangerously-human @eau1636 @onlythegeste  

“Oh my God, Dev,” he whispered. “What did you do?”

“Jakes.” Thursday bent over him, panic in his eyes. “Talk to me, sergeant.”

“It’s a blood shimmer, sir.” Jakes refused to look at Thursday. He stared at the dead man and at the two shades of blood that stained the stones. “They...oh, God.” He had to close his eyes until the wave of dizziness passed. “They take...the victim’s blood. And give it to the imposter. With the shimmer spell.” Jakes took a breath, trying--and failing--to calm himself. “They don’t...they don’t give the victim time to recover. They just...keep taking his blood. And…” Jakes shuddered. “Sir...anything...anything you do to the shimmer...the victim…” He turned to Thursday. “He felt that. He felt...every blow, every bit of that fight. The knife...it’s a feedback loop. He felt that. ”

Thursday was staring at Jakes with horror now, his face a deathly gray color. “My...my son. They…he...”

Jakes nodded. “We have to find him, sir.” He stared back down at the pool of blood--more black than red. “They’ve taken so much already. Damn them . He doesn’t have much time. And if they know...”

“Did it...the knife...did it kill him? ” Thursday’s chest was heaving.

“No. It’s...the spell isn’t that powerful. But he...he would feel…” Jakes lurched to the side, just barely in time to miss vomiting on Thursday. He stood, hunched over and retching, until there was nothing left. “I knew...I knew when I did it there was a chance. But if he’d gotten free…” He looked up at Thursday, knowing full well there were tears slipping down his face. “If you had believed him...we would have lost Dev for good.” Jakes’ shoulders shook with a silent sob. “Oh God, Dev. I’m so sorry.”

[thenugking]

Grand Academy For Future Villains II: Attack of the Sequel, Chapter 10: Rise of Chapter Ten. A commentary for Three.

General CW for the whole thing: parental abuse, internalised dehumanisation as a trauma response. Three’s not doing well.

Specific CW that there isn’t a chapter nine and it Bothers Me agh.

Game 1

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9

Game 2

Chapter 0 | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8

Alternatively, read on Google Docs here

***

#"Guards! Darkboard! Mom! Intruder in the school!"

But your voice only echoes down the empty corridors. 

"DarkBoard can't help you here," says Val, zir pen working busily on the paper. "That's why I'm here in the first place. That and saving the world. Just like my destiny foretold, I guess, thought I never thought this is what it meant. Turns out destiny is a strange and ironic thing."

((The game actually reads “Guards! DarkBoard! Mom! Your mother!” I assume this is a bug.))

Scorpius is here with Val, of course, so Three’s first thought is that ze convinced zir to come back. But then why are they in the admin building, in particular? And what is Val doing with the paperwork? Three doesn’t have anything personal against Val, they’re even sympathetic to zir. But they do know ze’s dangerous. Val doesn’t exactly do anything to make them feel better.

"No, you disappointment," adds the clone, "not the replica, me. Do you know how hard it is to make one of these things talk? I'm in the School Head's decoy office and unless you come here and help me, Horror is going to lose the house tournament. I'll be ruined! As your original creator, I order you! Drop what you're doing and help me!"

Imagine that: teaching classes, the personal management of the mindless hordes of maintenance staff, the pursuit of tenure, the faculty sponsorship of the Science Fiction dorm, and the leading role in the final school tournament challenge might have been a little too much for your mother. Is this…is this the first time she's ever actually asked for help?

"Your mother's calling," says your former roommate, stacking up the papers on the desk with one hand, keeping the flashback gun leveled at you with the other. "Go on."

Three isn’t the kind of person to bail on plans, but they’ve already helped Aurion a fair bit, and dealing with Val really is more important. This, on the other hand…

They’ve spent years running around making Maedryn’s life easier, but she’s never just admitted she needed their help before. How are they supposed to ignore her now, particularly when she gave them a direct command? But even leaving aside the fact that this means betraying Aurion (as much as Three doesn’t want to, they know he’ll understand, and maybe even be impressed), they can’t just let Val walk free either. Not when ze’s a threat to the Academy. Val has to come with them.

Val doesn’t particularly care to help Three. They’re planning to pretend to leave, and then return with their gun raised and the replica as a shield, but luckily, Scorpius convinces Val to come and help Maedryn before they have to try. Scorpius, by this point, has stopped making even a token effort to pretend ze’s loyal to Thriller, has all but moved into Dev’s room, and even fought for Horror in the virtual DarkBoard quest. Ze’s still very invested in Horror’s win, and Val’s invested enough in Scorpius to agree to go with zir.

Cautiously you approach the throne room door. You're expecting a variety of traps to greet you—but you see they have already been sprung. Peering around the corner, you see your mother facing off against none other than Dev. Leader of the genre that you swore to undermine.Distracting your mother as a way to get her to call off the defending forces? Clever.

They circle each other slowly across the throne room floor, hardly needing to look down to avoid the bottomless pits, the illusory tiles, and the triggers for the giant descending pendulums. Your mother appears to be armed with a classroom laser pointer.

Of course, you've seen her blow holes in student projects from across the room with this particular tool, so she's probably as well armed as she needs to be.

Neither of them have noticed you in the doorway.

#Defend my mother from Dev. I know she'll make it worth my while.

Your mother catches your eye as she backs Dev towards you. She takes it for granted that you're going to assist her. You are, of course. It'll just take a little planning.

Dev is avoiding the bottomless pit in the floor with practiced ease, but is not counting on someone coming up from behind and giving a well-placed shove. Which you do. The long fading scream is a measure of satisfaction.

"There!" Your mother catches her breath and staggers back to the throne. "You have done well.”

I know Maedryn’s supposed to back Horror if Sci-Fi wins the semi-final, and considering she just told me she was worried about losing, this is presumably a bug. I’m not sure how easy Dev would be to shove into a pit, either.

Not that adny of that really matters. Three arrives to help Maedryn against Fantasy, but by this point, Aurion’s already distracted fighting Cazenar, who’s trying to sabotage him. Dev and Scorpius get distracted by smooching, because they haven’t seen each other since Scorpius went after Val. Three discovers that, as Maedryn’s RA, Sona is also here to help Maedryn out, so has to work out what to do in this chaos to make themself look better than Sona. Val really doesn’t care about any of this.

And then a forcefield appears around the seven students, and A Baroness walks in and shoves a very distracted Maedryn into the bottomless pit, before reminding everyone what she said at the beginning of the year. “You can accomplish so much when you bring people together. And even more when you play them against each other."

So, weak and mortal student, We cannot help but notice that you have selected none for your consort. Could this be because the flesh holds no temptation for you—that you know a stranger and more uncanny hunger? Join Us, join Us, and let your consciousness be absorbed into Our millionfold awareness! See with a thousand eyes! Reach out with a hundred hands! 

Think about it anyway.

I mean, yes, that is absolutely 100% why. And assimilating would be… a welcome relief. At present though, Three feels they can serve better outside of DarkBoard. And they’d like to know who, precisely, DarkBoard’s been assimilating, to get a hundred hands but a thousand eyes. Three respects DarkBoard greatly, but that doesn’t mean they’re not going to tease them about how unrealistic their attempt at sounding grandiose is.

"…Thriller is the reigning genre of the Grand Academy for Future Villains."

Well deserved. Three is pleased to hear it, both for Ulik, and A Baroness.

"We have been unable to reach a conclusion on the final accreditation of the Grand Academy for Future Villains."

Groans. Hisses. The muffled sound of elbows being jabbed into ribs as the eyes of the Head sweep around the hall and students hush each other.

"We will be summoning a fourth member of the Board of Visitors and Overlords to assist us in our deliberations," says Lord X, "and anticipate having a final ruling on the Academy's future within the week. In the meantime…"

Ms. Goul touches his arm. He looks down as she passes him a paper.

"In the meantime," he says, "we will be conducting interviews with individual students and members of the faculty. The following entities will be summoned to attend over the course of the next week. Three—"

You don't hear any of the rest of the list. Is this about Val? Have they found zir? What do they know about what you did?

You jam your hands into your pockets to stop them from shaking, and there you find something strange. A paper of some sort—you definitely didn't put it in there. 

Hunching forward over your table to prevent anyone from seeing, you draw it out. It's an envelope—yellow with age and smelling of dust. The last time you saw that envelope, Val was folding up a paper and putting it inside. Ze must have slipped it into your pocket over the course of your confrontation. How did you manage to miss it?

You take out the paper and unfold it. It's an official form from the days before DarkBoard digitized all of the Academy's records. You can't immediately make head or tail of it, but you see a spot on the printed page where information has been filled in by hand. 

BY CONSENT OF THE ADMINISTRATION AND UNDER SUPERVISION OF THE BOARD OF VISITORS AND OVERLORDS, you read, THREE IS AN OFFICIAL REGISTERED FATAL WEAKNESS OF THE GRAND ACADEMY FOR FUTURE VILLAINS TYPE 3.3.75

There’s a lot of terrifying things happening here. Firstly, the fact that the auditors are undecided. Three doesn’t know what’s gone wrong for them to be undecided still. Is it because of Val? Is it the way Maedryn’s slipping? Have Three and Professor Ulik not done enough to cover Professor Arthenes’ workload? Whatever it is, Three should have done better.

And then Lord X says the auditors want to speak to them, which carries the terror that the auditors know who they are and care about their opinion at all, but also the relief and hope if they give a glowing enough testimonial about the Academy, they can save it. And another wave of fear over the idea of the auditors listening to them…

And then there’s the paper, which is the most terrifying thing of all. Val’s been telling Three all year that they’re more important than they make out to be, that they have narrative weight, that they mean anything at all. And now they’ve made it true. Three is only just able to crumple the paper up tightly in their hand before the room starts spinning around them in the worst panic attack they’ve ever had.

[nearlynorth]

Day Two: Role Swap

Baz Pitch was thirsty. He hungered for blood, let his fangs slide out of his gums. He reluctantly drained rat after rat until he finally wasn't thirsty anymore. Until one day he wasn't.

——— Simon I'm cold. Why am I cold? This is the first time this has happened since my magic erupted, even after I lost it. I normally wake up twisted in my sheets, sweat soaking my pajamas while Baz sleeps beside me shivering. Something feels wrong.

I do a mental check of my body.

Feet. Check. Stomach. Check. Face. Check. Wings. Not there. Tail. Not there.

I sit up suddenly. My wings and my tail are gone. My last connections to magic, gone. Tears begin to leak out of my eyes as I cry silently. I don't want to wake Baz. He sleeps like the dead, which I guess is fitting, even though he's not dead. It's the point of one of our only arguments, the fact that I think that he's not dead. He insists that he is, the self-deprecating twat.

I look over at Baz, my panic momentarily forgotten. He's sleeping in an odd position under the blankets, it looks like he has a pillow underneath him.

I feel my stomach rumble, and I pray that it doesn't wake Baz. I watch him open his eyes, and just stare at me.

Baz I hear Simon's stomach rumble and I laugh quietly to myself. He must want scones. Simon is a bottomless pit, no matter how much he eats he could still keep going.

I shift uncomfortably. There is something poking at me, making it hard to lie flat. It's pushing me up from the mattress.

I turn to smile at Simon and I have to stop and stare.

He looks different. He's still beautiful but in a different way. He's still covered by those freckles and moles that I love, but his normally tawny skin is paler. And his wings, his wings, and tail are gone.

I sit up to get a closer look at him, and he gasps.

"Baz, why do you have my wings?" Simon says to me. His voice is awash with disbelief, and Crowley, that's how I feel.

"I don't have wings!" I say indignantly, even as I get up out of bed to look in the mirror. "Crowley, I do have your wings."

Deep, blood-red wings are sprouting out of my shoulder blades, ripping twin tears into my shirt. A barbed tail in the same shade is flicking in between my legs. I'm not as pale as I normally am, and when I flick my tongue to where my fangs normally would be, I feel nothing.

I'm still staring at the mirror when he says, "Baz, I'm hungry."

I roll my eyes at him. "Simon, you're always hungry." In the mirror I see his face begin to show signs of stress, and I turn around to face him. "Simon, what's wrong?" Worry begins to creep into my voice.

"It's like I'm hungry and I'm thirsty at the same time." He whispers. Strain is evident on his face.

Is it possible that since I have his wings and tail, he got my vampirism? That doesn't seem possible, but you never know with Simon. The holes have been being filled, and Bunce's father says that Simon could get his back too. His magic always was explosive. Could this be a sign?

I walk over to him and I lay a gentle hand on his shoulder. Simon's cheeks are puffy with fangs, and he's paler than usual. "Simon, let's get you some blood, and then call Bunce."

"Penny," he mumbled around the fangs. "She'll know what to do."

I nod and lead him into the kitchen that was attached to our small flat. We had made the decision to move in with each other three years into our relationship. Crowley, if Dev or Niall could see me now. They'd say that I've gone soft. But that's true. I've gone soft for Simon Snow, and I'm finally not afraid to admit it. I was so scared for so many years.

"Snow, sit." I point at the mismatched chair that resides at our round wooden table. As he sits down, I go to the fridge and pull out a cup of blood. We had managed to find a sustainable blood source for me, with blood coming from a magical butcher in London that caters specifically to vampires. "Do you want a straw?"

"Yes," Simon's words are muffled by the fangs that are filling up his mouth. He grimaces and shivers.

I push a straw through the plastic film on top of the blood cup and hand it to him slowly. His vision must be heightened, and his hearing should be amplified as well. I'll have to be careful not to frighten him.

"I'm going to go call Bunce. Is it okay if I leave you here for a few minutes?" I ask quietly. I don't want to overload his senses. One of the few memories that I have from when I was younger is just the feeling of being completely overwhelmed.

Simon I shake my head at Baz when he asks if it's alright if he leaves. I don't want to be here alone. Everything feels so different. My balance is off because I don't have my wings and tail, and I'm cold. When these stupid fangs go away I'll have to tell Baz that I'm sorry for leaving the window open on all those nights at Watford. No wonder he was always so insistent that it was closed, I'm freezing.

And I'm thirsty. These dumb fangs are filling my mouth and making it even harder to speak. My words are being caught physically too instead of just mentally.

I take the cup of blood as Baz pulls out his phone to call Penny. We moved into separate flats recently as Micha moved to London. She moved in with him and I moved in with Baz.

The blood is weird. It has a metallic sort of taste and it feels weird to be drinking blood through a straw, but it makes the fangs slide back into my gums.

I can hear Baz talking quietly with Penny as I drink the blood. Penny was hesitant about Baz at first, but she has warmed up to him. Baz helped me a lot in those first days after I lost my magic. He helped me understand that my magic wasn't what made me me. It was only a part of me.

"Bunce," Baz says simply on the phone.

I'm surprised when I am able to hear Penny's response, a single word. "Hello." Baz is always talking about how he can hear me even when I'm in a different room.

"We need you to come over immediately." Baz is looking at me. I used to hate when he got that look in his eyes, the one that fills his eyes with concern. But now I know that it means that he cares about me. I used to feel like I was useless when he looked at me like that. It wasn't his fault, it was a product of my own mind. Now I just feel loved.

I smile at him to show that the fangs are gone. He smiled weakly back at me, filling in Penny on what happened.

"I'll be right over. Let me just check in with my dad." Penny always wants to do research.

I suppose that I can wait a few minutes for her to come. I don't feel as uncomfortable now that my fangs are gone and I've finished the blood. I just feel cold.

"Baz," He whips his head around to look at me. It's interesting to be able to see my wings without looking in a mirror. Baz looks gorgeous with them, like an avenging angel. "I'm sorry for arguing with you about the window being open."

Baz I feel my face break out into a smile when he apologizes. The idiot's finally realized that I was actually cold for all those years and not just opposing him. "I'll get you a blanket." Walking with the wings is cumbersome, but if Simon can do it, I can.

As I'm coming back with a blanket, Bunce arrives. She walks right into the flat, letting herself in with her key. A map is cradled gently in her arms.

"Oh, wow." She breaths out, taking in Simon before turning to me. "This really is a powerful spell."

"Really? This could be a spell?" Simon asks. He's gotten better at not flinching when magic is talked about. He used to hate any mention of magic at all. "Who could've cast it?"

"That's what we are trying to figure out." I bring the blanket over to him and drape it around his shoulders. "I didn't cast it, so the only reasonable solution for who cast it could be..." I trail off, letting Bunce finish my sentence.

"You, Simon. It could be you." Bunce finishes.

Simon looks stunned. He never was good at hiding what he felt. "What... how... how is that possible?"

Bunce lays the map out on the table carefully, revealing London and its surrounding areas. Large circles are filled in on various spots on the map. "This is a map of where all the holes, dead spots, places without magic, that used to exist."

"Used to exist?" Simon's eyes are blown up wide.

Bunce nods. "Can you see where they are filled in? That's because the dead spots no longer exist. The magic has returned to these places, and we think that it could have returned to you."

"We?" Simon manages to tear his gaze away from Bunce to stare at me.

"I've been talking with Professor Bunce. I think that your magic could have returned to you, and that's what prompted the switch." I place a hand on his shoulder to comfort him. Simon looks like his whole world just blew up. He's slumped against the back of the chair and his eyes are half closed.

"Try casting a spell." Bunce encourages. "I recommend Flick of the Switch." She said the words without magic purpose behind them, so that she wasn't casting a spell.

"What's that from?" Simon asks, astonishment turning into curiosity.

"It's from a popular song. Trixie used to use it all the time when she wanted to switch the properties of two things, so it should work for you." Bunce tells Snow, smiling at the memory of Trixie.

"Flick of the Switch." Simon says forcefully. There is magic behind the words, and my body begins to tingle.

I can feel Simon's magic encasing my body. It feels different than how it did at Watford, with no smoke smell coming off of him. When I make eye contact with him, he's giddy.

Simon I'm magic. I'm a mage again. I can do magic. I cast the spell and it works, it actually works!

My magic feels controllable now, not like how it felt when I was the Chosen One. I feel like how I did when I was sharing my magic with Baz, except I'm doing this by myself.

I connect my eyes with Baz. When I open my mouth to speak, my vision goes black for a few moments.

When my vision comes back, I see Baz standing close to me. He no longer has wings.

I smile at him and reach back to feel if I have my wings back. They are there, like they always are.

"Baz, I can do magic." I say to him, my smile huge.

"I know, Simon, you can." Baz pulls my face to his, and gives me my first kiss with controllable magic.

[flamingo-strikes]

Talia Week: Day 1

For Day 1 of Taliaalghulweek, I chose the prompt “green.”

Now I just want to emphasize that this is all in an AU, every fic I write for this event. It’s my own personal universe bc canon sucks. In this AU, Bruce, Selina, and Talia (OT3) are together and raise their kids. Jason never died, and he goes to Princeton. Talia cut ties with her father a loooooong time ago, and she works at WE. She doesn’t really do capes anymore, but instead focuses on her family. 

ALSO this fic mentions Dev, who is an OC owned by @audreycritter!!!! Her fics are literally amazing, and I love Dev so much. He’s a part of this lil universe too.

Talia and characters besides Dev: owned by DC comics

Hope you enjoy!

.

.

.

Green.

A color that forever haunted Talia in her dreams, her thoughts, and even the most mundane of actions she did. It made her wake up in the middle of the night, panting and breathing like she’d just run twenty miles in a minute. It made her pause for a moment, body going rigid, completely frozen before she went back to what she was doing, a forced smile on her lips. A color she could never escape, in her dreams and her nightmares.

Green was the color of insanity, in her opinion.

When she tried to think back to her past, it came in fragments. Losing her mother was something she remembered quite vividly. Everything between that event and the moment she made up her mind to leave her father, it was all a blur. She could only vaguely recall the studying, learning, speaking new languages, meeting new teachers her father would hire, and then killing said teachers. Other moments, she couldn’t remember so well. The times her father would hug her genuinely, or when she was sure he loved her.

The times before she became a tool to him, where all that mattered about her was her ability to produce a worthy heir.

The training, however, is something that lingered in her mind. She remembered every moment of it, the brutality she endured for so many years. Fighting until her body felt like it was about to break under pressure, her lungs burning in exhaustion. The metallic taste of blood in her mouth, and all over her body. The blows to her body that she took, before returning them ten times harder. It was like a cycle, spit, rinse, and repeat. Every second of everyday.

There were times where she wasn’t successful though. The times where she buckled under the weight atop her, and succumbed to her ending. The times where she wasn’t quick enough to block a hit, one that would fatally strike an artery. The times where a well-fought battle would end with her body laying limply, devoid of life. Where her world spun until everything went black.

Dying, as her kids would put it, sucked.

Then, everything was blank…and then it was not. Her eyes would flash open in terror, as her body was submerged in the Pit, surrounded by its infectious water. She felt like she was on fire, while simultaneously freezing. Her mind would be a haze of memories and incoherence, struggling to remember why she was there, what the hell had happened. Then when it hit her, and her heart shattered. Every time.

She had been killed, and now she was forced to come back to life.

Talia could recall the panic, the screams, and the endless pain of feeling her body put itself back together. She would watch in horror as open gashes would stitch themselves together until only faint scars remained. She would cry as she felt her bones gradually attaching themselves back together, from where they were broken.

And through it all, Talia could only see the disgusting shade of bright, neon green that enveloped her world. As she sat back up in panic, her body still in the water, all she could think was how much she hated the color. Every time she died, and was mercilessly resurrected in the horrid green pit, she realized how much she hated it. She hated green, she hated her father, and she hated her life. More than anything, she hated the shattered remains of her mind and sanity, she hated feeling broken.

It’s been a decade, and she is still broken. But not shattered. No, her scars are still there, but her heart has healed a bit. Her mind is in a better place, and she finds that she loves life more than anything now. 

She loves waking up early while her beloveds are still snoring, safe after another rough night. She loves holding baby Helena close, and planting kisses atop her little head. She loves when Damian proudly shows her his drawings, and then having to stop fights that ensue between him and Tim. She loves when Cass and Steph invite her to waffle feasts. She loves that finally after almost a decade, she can now have amicable conversations with Richard. 

She loves drinking wine and venting about life with Kate at the redhead’s apartment. She loves going window shopping and strolling through the city with Barbara, on the rare occasions the two have time. She loves helping Dev organize his supplies in the medbay while having deep talks, and helping him keep her husband in check, since God knows he needs it sometimes. 

She loves helping Alfred clean the house, finding the normalcy and the older man’s company relaxing and nice. She loves helping Kitrina with her homework and listening to her complain about school, but knowing that the young girl loves it regardless. 

She loves going out with Tim and trying new coffee shops in Gotham with him. She loves hearing about how college is going for Jason, despite him being so far away. And she loves when Duke introduces her to his video games, often times with Damian interrupting. 

She loves having to reach up and tie her Bruce’s necktie before they leave for work. She loves leaning on her Selina’s shoulder as they watch a movie on the rare nights they have for themselves.

Now, when she sees the color green, she smiles. Not out of happiness, but satisfaction of what her world has become. She loves life now, and she supposes she can try and learn to love green, too.

[doctormctiddy]

The Ask Arcana Questionnaire

Using the asks the Arcana devs have answered on their tumblr, I’ve composed together a list of questions you can use for your own MCs/fan apprentices/etc if you so wish! You’re by no means obligated to answer all questions, but rather use it as a tool to help develop your character(s). This list will also be updated as the devs hold more Q&A’s over time. Have fun! (Warning: long post ahead)

Thanks to @communitytheaterlucio and @buzzed-butt-lass for helping me find the post!! ♥♥

Part 1.) Characterization. Use these questions as a way to flesh out some of your character’s personality, background, likes/dislikes, etc.

Gloria is italics and Elise is bold.

Their surname? - Morgenstern, Lythan (Lie-than) Halloween costume? - Vampire, Dragon Familiar/animal friend? - Selina the mountain lion, Claire the arctic fox Big spoon or little spoon? - Flexible but mostly little, big Religious? - kinda?, nah Favorite fruit? - strawberries, raspberries Idea of a nice date? - theatre date, shopping date Favorite season? - winter, winter When is their Birthday? - November 23 (cause self insert), January 10th Favorite carnival ride? - terrified of most rides so prefers skeeball, the zero gravity thing because she’s an adrenaline junkie Favorite emoji? - 💖, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (Gloria is first and Elise is second.) Like to do in their free time? - write, bake What sports would they play? - not big on sports, baseball What kind of car would they drive? - an old car from the 80s probably, a VW Microbus

(Continued under the cut!)

How do they treat their significant other when they’re feeling unusually affectionate? - Cuddles and smooches, casual cuddles Favorite manga? - Black Butler, The Girl from the Other Side Main store to shop for clothes (if they lived in our world)? - Hot Topic, Macy’s What were they like growing up? - shy but rambunctious, blunt but fun What kind of drunk are they at a party? - hates alcohol, quick to anger’d drunk Reaction to someone telling a dirty joke? - blushes from shame but giggles, eyerolls but smiles Reaction to stubbing their toe? - screams a long line of creative curse words, probably sets fire to the thing she stubbed her toe on Lucio Favorite color? - red, grey Favorite See’s chocolate? - i have no idea what that is. Favorite poptart flavor? - hot fudge sundae, brown sugar cinnamon Favorite hobby? - singing, tinkering How they sing at karaoke parties? - like it’s the tony awards, very casually Preferred social media platform? - tumblr, instagram Opinion on puns? - YES, only in some situations How do they typically deal with their problems? - tries to handle it by herself only to get depressed/anxious about it, faces them head on Spice girl nickname? - Drama Spice, Chili Spice Personal hygiene routine? - showers in mint scented everything, washes face and pits and hair and hopes for the best Favorite alcoholic drink? - hates alcohol, anything with vodka Favorite genre of music? - rock n roll, those acoustic indie covers Modern AU job/career? - actress, bakery owner Favorite musical? - phantom of the opera, wicked How would they celebrate their significant other’s birthday? - lots of doting and gifts, chill dinner with a small cake

Would they rather turn into a tiny rhinoceros or a giant hamster? - giant hamster, tiny rhino

What would they do for their significant other for Valentine’s Day? - dinner out and then a movie night, probably treats it like a normal day until the end with a cute surprise

Pros and cons to having them as a roommate? - pros: fun to be around; cons: terrible memory and forgets to clean, pros: clean and respects your privacy; cons: talks in her sleep sometimes

On a scale from 1-10 how Extra are they? - 1000000000/10, 4/10

Favorite meme? - rickroll, and then everything changed when the fire nation attacked (she doesn’t even watch avatar)

Favorite three pokemon? - Servine, Reshiram, Jolteon; Glaceon, Dialga, Skitty

How tall are they? - 5’3”, 5’6”

Part 2.) Scaling. Using your best judgement, where does your fan apprentice fall on these scales?

[Example: Shortest to tallest?

Portia, Asra, [MC name here], Nadia, Lucio, Julian, Muriel]

Most to least superstitious?

Portia, Julian, Gloria, Nadia, Lucio, Elise, Asra, Muriel

Most to least excited to be at a WWE event?

Portia, Lucio, Asra, Julian, Elise, Nadia, Muriel, Gloria

Worst to best at handling children?

Nadia, Lucio, Elise, Muriel, Asra, Gloria, Portia, Julian

Worst to best alcohol tolerance?

Muriel, Asra, Lucio, Elise, Julian, Portia, Nadia

Best to worst at keeping secrets?

Asra, Gloria, Elise, Muriel, Nadia, Lucio, Portia, Julian

Best to worst dancers?

Asra, Elise, Portia, Gloria, Julian, Nadia, Lucio, Muriel

Most to least likely to slap you for stealing a mcnugget?

Nadia, Lucio, Asra, Portia, Elise, Gloria, Julian, Muriel

Least to most likely to eat something weird on a dare?

Nadia, Gloria, Julian, Muriel, Elise, Lucio, Portia, Asra

Least to most old?

Asra, Portia, Elise, Muriel, Gloria, Julian, Lucio, Nadia

Part 3.) Extra characterization tidbits (whether you want to make a description or insert a photo for these is up to you!)

MC as a:

•MCR song

Gloria, Elise

•vine

Gloria, Elise

•a piece of furniture

Gloria, Elise

•character from the Labyrinth

Gloria: Jareth; Elise: Hoggle

•character in a cliche Noir film

Gloria: singer/hitwoman; Elise: an Arsene Lupin type thief

•Tarot card

Gloria: Moon; Elise: TBD (I haven’t picked one yet.)

•Micheal Jackson song

Gloria (It counts), Elise

•character in the play musical “Cats”

Gloria: Jemima; Elise: Griddlebone

•Panic! at the disco song

Gloria, Elise

•cliche high school student stereotype

Gloria: the theatre nerd; Elise: the lone wolf

•furby

NO.

•flight rising dragon breed

Never played it...

•deadly sin

Gloria: Envy; Elise: Greed

•DnD class

never played that either...

•character from Mean Girls

That movie is gross. :/

•hogwarts house

Gloria: Hufflepuff; Elise: Ravenclaw

•cryptid

Gloria: Nessie; Elise: Mothman (I’m basic)

•monster factory character

I have no idea what that is either...

[olympiansrpg1-blog]

BASICS

Name: Marcus Christopher Russo Age: 35 Affiliation: New Olympus Occupation: Hitman Faceclaim: DJ Cotrona Status: TAKEN by Dev

THE STORY

They call you Morpheus, a deliverer of both dreams and nightmares. You were once a war hero, the desert speaking volumes of those that were pitted against you, giving you a reason to fight when all you did was struggle to survive as a child. The streets did not treat you kindly, giving you more scars than you could count and you wanted nothing more than to leave your deadbeat town behind. Your tendency to hurt found a place in the heart of the military, three back-to-back deployments and more ribbons under your name than most in the service. Your career ended abruptly, however, cut short by an unseen threat that left you nothing but the hollowness inside your chest and a mind screaming for you to run and keep running at the slightest of sounds. Olympus extended an olive branch to you, the promise of grounding you to something real when you were grasping at straws before enticed you to join and stay despite who and what you were before. Your hands still shake from the weight of what you carry, but they are also lethal and strong when tasked with something greater than yourself.

CONNECTIONS

ARTEMIS - Emptiness has never been your friend and you find yourself gravitating towards self-destruction at times. Artemis has been your saving grace, someone to watch over you when things begin to fester within you, like a dam waiting to burst. You need them so often that you are terrified that they will one day get sick of you, your recurring problems becoming repetitive. Pulling yourself away from them is like slowly weaning yourself from a drug, however.

HERMES - If Artemis is the angel on your shoulder, then Hermes is surely the devil. You are not entirely sure why you continued to speak to them after Olympus fell apart, but they often incite your worst memories. They push and push, but some days are better than others. Sometimes, your jaw aches from clenching it in anger around them, but, other days, you’ve never felt more lighthearted after an interaction with them. You are not sure what the solution is, but you’re willing to do what it takes to make yourself feel better permanently.

ORPHEUS - A part of you feels guilt at what you’ve done, but it’s only business. Eurydice fell at your hands, planted to look as though it were an accident when the hit was called out on them. You never understood why one of your own had to go, but the return of Orpheus is a stark reminder that people are willing to do anything for redemption. For now, you’re preparing for the day you meet face-to-face with them again, knowing that only one of you will survive the fight.

SUGGESTED FACECLAIMS

Michael Trevino, Theo James, Theo Rossi, Janina Gavankar, Meagan Tandy

BIOGRAPHY

Newburgh is sometimes jokingly referred to as the 6th Borough of New York, but your hometown does anything but fit into the urban stereotypes that come with the city that never sleeps. When you think ‘home’, you think long roads lined by boarded up housing projects, cracked sidewalks and long-forgotten public schools, a string of mayors with empty promises and a childhood saturated with what’s so often patronizingly referred to as the tedium of poverty. There’s no jobs, no organization, nothing to stop you from finding your way into the fighting in the streets and finding it young, with the kind of no-holds-barred approach to a fight only found in the truly bloodthirsty and children. You’ve got too much to prove to bow out of a fight and you have the scars to show it. You’re twelve the first time someone pulls a knife on the street, fourteen when a stray bullet from a drive-by shooting sends your second period lab partner to the hospital. The message couldn’t be any clearer: there’s no opportunity here for you other than more of the same, or a short life and a long drop to rest on the dirt at the bottom of your grave.

You pay your lip service to teenage rebellion by flouting the rules of higher authority, but deep down you’d still like to believe there’s some justice being done in the world, like in the spaghetti westerns you loved so much as a kid. If it’s true that the Army preys on young adults with little options in their future, you’re a poster child for their type and you buy into it with a bus ticket to the nearest recruiting station in the summer of your junior year in highschool. There’s no entry into basic training until you’ve graduated and turned eighteen, but just the promise of escape keeps you going until the day you finally leave the sixth borough behind. You may still be rough around the edges, still just as shit-talking and uppity as the other boys in your group, but you hold a steely-eyed determination that carries you through physical tests of endurance, verbal barrages and tactical training with flying colors. There’s no contact with the outside world during Basic, no phone calls or visits – and that suits you just fine. For the first time in your life, you’ve found a place you truly excel.

You move onto advanced training with superiors already pointing you in the direction of speciality careers, but your eyes are fixated on infantry, you want to be on the front lines with a thousand scenes of war movie glory passing through your mind. They encourage you to take on sharpshooting contests and accuracy trials and, that competitive nature of yours that kept you brawling in your youth now properly directed, you make it your business to learn the ins and outs of every weapon you can get your hands on. With such a promising career in front of you, it isn’t hard. But by the time your training is complete, something occurs that shakes the United States to its core and changes what the front lines mean dramatically. It’s 2001 and your boots are some of the first on the ground when America invades Afghanistan. They call it ‘the War on Terror’, was there ever a cause that seemed more blatantly right, more worth fighting for? The conflict drags on, the casualties pile up, but you’re making your name in the business of brutal efficiency. Every day is another chance to prove yourself and the adrenaline becomes such a central part of your life, you barely remember what it’s like to not constantly be on guard when you’re back on home turf again – it’s uncomfortable to be safe, it’s unsettling,  it’s itchy, you crave that thrill, you want that excitement back.

This first leave is when you meet Norah, an army brat in the field of tech. She has no one she cares to write – neither do you. With this kind of shared background, the two of you joke over coffee that it has to be fate. You cross back onto enemy soil with her picture tucked into the lining of your jacket. Months pass and you only rack up more ribbons and awards; Combat Action, Expert Infantryman, Expert Marksman with your skill recognized in more than one weapon. You write to this girl weekly and you tell her how this place has started to feel more familiar to you than home, like that endless orange dust has somehow sunk through your skin and settled into your soul, and somehow, miraculously, she understands. You can’t remember another person who gloried in your triumphs and empathized with your defeats the way she does and when your second leave forces you back to the states, it’s a matter of weeks before the ring comes out. You’re twenty-seven, you already have another deployment planned. You don’t care. You’re in love. Neither of you rush to plan the wedding day, the two of you have so much time ahead of you and after those long summer months spending every second together, curled up in her bed, laughing raucously in restaurants, spending lazy days at the beach, you actually feel a twinge of regret when it’s time to leave.

Something has changed. It’s been nine years, and the war shows no sign of ending. You still know these places by heart but there’s something repetitive to it all and even when the adrenaline starts pumping again there’s a certain carelessness to your actions, an ease of understanding that makes you and the soldiers with you drift towards complacency. Even death becomes normal when it’s built into your weeks with the certainty of eating and sleep, like driving a well-worn commute and finding you’ve arrived at your destination with barely any memory of the route there. And a drive is what catches you in the height of your career. A road bomb flips your transport vehicle on an isolated stretch of road and in a matter of seconds your detachment goes from the easy conversation and laughter of an average day to screaming bodies and twisted metal pinning you down against the sand while fire blazes on every side. It could be a matter of minutes or hours before you drag yourself out of the flaming wreck, but you never forget the visceral panic that had flooded your body, the certainty of your own death that had overridden all training with the sort of primal fear that only concerns itself with survival. You never forget how it felt trying to breathe in that burning air.

You tell the story to Norah, to countless curious civilians and soldiers alike after and you hear over and over again how lucky you were. What were some minor burns, some smoke inhalation when you knew men who had lost limbs, you knew men who had lost their lives? You were so lucky to be whole. Perhaps that’s what drives you to try to return so quickly after the incident, to prove to others and yourself that you wouldn’t waste that luck, that you weren’t afraid, that you wouldn’t disrespect the memory of dead and injured by hiding behind it. You wouldn’t tarnish your reputation. And it seems so easy to slip back into normalcy again – until the first time transport is required again and you try to step back into the compartment that had turned into a death trap on the flip of a coin. Your throat closes like you’re breathing in that smoke again and your reputation doesn’t save you from the panic that sinks in its claws before they can shut the door behind you. You bolt for the open air and tear off your helmet, your pack, your outer layers, throw your gun aside, and it’s only when you’re on your hands and knees gasping in the dirt that you realize you haven’t escaped from the fire as clean as you thought.

Your superiors are the ones that push for you to receive a psychological profile and the hammer comes down not long after: an honorable discharge at the age of twenty nine with a by-the-books case of combat-related PTSD. The next time your plane lands on the tarmac of an American airport, it’s for good. The weeks that follow are a daze. Norah tries, but this is something she can’t understand. The wedding is pushed back further, then completely fades from both of your minds. Amidst the anger, the fear, the shame, you start feeling guilt. Your fiancee has made you her entire life and there’s nothing you can give her in return but a future shackled to a broken man. You call off the engagement, acting the solid rock in the face of her screaming rage and desperate tears though the pain for you is just as raw, you’re so fully convinced that this is the right thing, you know she’ll only realize the that she’s been spared when she finds another partner that won’t wake up in the middle of the night with his hands at her throat. You move back to New York, but this time you stick in the city. You may be alone in the traditional sense, but NYC never allows for true isolation and as long as the taxis keep blaring their horns at night, it’ll never get quiet enough for your mind to catch up to you entirely.

Olympus finds you then, part time teaching gun safety at a local range, part time wandering the grimy streets like they’ll somehow manifest for you the answer as to what the hell you’re supposed to do now and, in a way, they do. Cronus’ mob puts a purpose in your mind again and it’s remarkably easy to paste everything from the Army over what Olympus requires from you. There will always be something black and white, something to work for and against, and with the other so clear in your mind, it’s easy to shut down those pesky moral conflicts when the time comes to put a bullet in someone’s head. You dreamed of justice once and you find a corrupted version of it here. You’ve never been a sadist, but Olympus teaches you to kill creatively, how to get around laws and foil forensics, how to make a murder look like a mistake. You’re always quick, always polished, and always deadly silent. Your apartment is a heap of cigarette butts and discarded Army shirts but your kills are clean and you’re known to never leave a loose end.  

That competence is what you value over everything else and when Olympus comes to a fork in the road and splits in half to choose both, you follow your instincts to the one that promises the greatest return. Zeus is the kind of wild card that you’ve seen cause men’s deaths overseas; he may be capable but you’ve yet to see proof enough of it to earn your loyalty. It’s Hades you lay the most trust in, even with his age. He may be younger than you but you’ve seen him at work and your respect for a natural leader transcends that boundary. You hear that Zeus and Hades both flourished under Cronus’ hand, but you don’t see the late boss in Zeus’ actions. You see him in Hades. So your cards have been dealt there and there they’ve remained for the past five years. You don’t regret it. You know the trouble brewing on the horizon, in the form of Johnson’s blood heir and a personal grudge from an old kill of yours that may yet come back to haunt you along with the memories you just can’t seem to escape. In all actuality, you’re clinging onto a cliff’s edge by your fingertips and all while convincing yourself the fall will never come, even as your grip on reality continues to slip. You’ve made it this far and you’ll keep going the way you always have until you flourish into something greater, something improved, or until you collapse in on yourself like a dying star.